Unmasking Boko Haram: Exploring Global Jihad in Nigeria 9781626378933

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UNMASKING

Boko Haram

Published in association with the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St Andrews

UNMASKING

Boko Haram Exploring Global Jihad in Nigeria

Jacob Zenn

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2020 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Suite 314, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com

and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Gray’s Inn House, 127 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 5DB © 2020 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Zenn, Jacob, 1983– author. Title: Unmasking boko haram : exploring global jihad in nigeria / Jacob Zenn. Description: Boulder : Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “A detailed chronicle of the foundation of Boko Haram, its internal dynamics, and its evolution as a global jihadist movement”— Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019055149 (print) | LCCN 2019055150 (ebook) | ISBN 9781626378780 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781626378933 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Boko Haram—History. | Islamic State in West Africa Province. | Ansaru. | Jihad. | Islamic fundamentalism—Nigeria. | Terrorist organizations—Nigeria. | Violence--Religious aspects—Islam. | Geopolitics—Religious aspects—Islam. | Islam and state—Nigeria. Classification: LCC HV6433.N62 B69 2020 (print) | LCC HV6433.N62 (ebook) | DDC 363.32509669—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055149 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055150

British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

1 Boko Haram and Global Jihad

2 Nigerian Jihadists in Sudan and the Sahel

1

19

3 Al-Qaeda in Nigeria

47

5 Broken Alliances with Salafis

95

4 Ideological Preparation for Jihad

65

6 Mobilizing for Battle

123

8 Factional Feuds and Territorial Conquests

169

10 The Islamic State in West Africa Province

255

Appendixes 1 Nigerian Heads of State and Associated Key Events Since 1976 2 Boko Haram Leadership Time Line

333 335

7 The Role of al-Qaeda Affiliates 9 Allegiance to the Islamic State

11 The Future of Global Jihad in Nigeria

List of Acronyms Glossary Bibliography Index About the Book

v

147 211

319

337 339 341 401 415

Acknowledgments

I thank Marie-Claire Antoine, Shena Redmond, Sally Glover, and the rest of the team at Lynne Rienner Publishers, along with Tim Wilson, director of the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at St Andrews, for support and mentorship enabling me to write this book. In addition, I thank Mary Jane (MJ) Fox and Bob Feldman for reviewing draft chapters and MJ for assiduously compiling the index and explaining to me the processes involved in writing a book. Further, Elizabeth Pearson, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Mia Bloom, and John Campbell have provided invaluable camaraderie and guidance. The Jamestown Foundation’s president, Glen Howard; board of directors, especially Willem de Vogel; and program associates, especially John Foulkes, who assisted in drafting the book’s two maps, have also been sources of support without which this book would not have been possible. I am also grateful for The Jamestown Foundation board member and doyen of terrorism studies, Bruce Hoffman, for encouraging my continued research on Boko Haram and teaching on violent nonstate organizations at Georgetown University’s outstanding security studies program. There have also been numerous colleagues in Nigeria, including the European Union Technical Assistance to Nigeria’s Evolving Security Challenges and Voice of America teams, especially journalist Ibrahim Ahmed, who assisted significantly while I conducted research for the book. Furthermore, I appreciate the Swiss embassy in Abuja for its dedication to seeking a resolution to the conflict and for supporting my research on mapping Boko Haram’s organizational structure in Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. I also thank Nelly Lahoud for patiently reviewing several Arabic primary sources with me; David Umaru for

vii

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Acknowledgments

sharing analytical insights; Aymenn al-Tamimi for translating several primary sources for the scholarly community and corroborating details in several sources; Andrea Brigaglia and Alessio Iocci for two online conversations; Omar Mahmood for discussing data and trends; and Zacharias Pieri for book-related discussions. Several other scholars, including Abdulbasit Kassim, who planted the idea for me to write this book, Bassim al-Hussaini, Mr. Orange, Caleb Weiss, Aaron Zelin, Idayat Hassan, Héni Nsaibia, Bulama Bukarti, Michael Ryan, Fernando Reinares, Rida Lyammouri, and Seamus Hughes, have kindly shared and helped me locate source materials. I have also benefited from “rubbing minds” with numerous colleagues on Twitter and at conferences who have furthered the collective knowledge on Nigeria, the Lake Chad subregion, and Boko Haram. I also thank colleagues in Abuja, Kaduna, and Maiduguri, especially Atta Barkindo and Abba Kakami, whose support during my fieldwork was magnanimous, and I wish them all the best in their pursuits and continued safety amid conflict. I thank my family for supporting my education and appreciating my inquisitiveness. I also thank the JAAIL team for bearing with me and sharing my computer screen during the writing process. The book is dedicated to current and future researchers on Boko Haram and jihadism in Nigeria, Africa, and globally who seek to understand the roots and progression of the “Boko Haram phenomenon” and related conflicts in order to resolve them and ease the suffering of those affected. I also praise all people working to end this crisis and honor those who sacrificed their lives in this conflict and others worldwide.

1 Boko Haram and Global Jihad

Global jihad in Nigeria was brought to the world’s attention by Boko Haram’s 2011 suicide car bombing at the UN building in the capital, Abuja. However, not until Boko Haram’s self-proclaimed enslavement of schoolgirls from Chibok town in 2014 did the group and its victims generate widespread international reaction. Those reactions included disbelief about the abduction by Nigerian leaders in Abuja, expressions of sympathy about the girls’ plight by the US president and first lady in Washington, DC, and praise for the “revival of slavery” by Islamic State (IS) leaders in Iraq and Syria.1 By 2015, Boko Haram was ranked the world’s most lethal terrorist group.2 That same year IS formally declared it an affiliate, or wilaya (province), leading to its rebranding as Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP). Although still commonly referred to as Boko Haram, ISWAP’s jihadists have since 2015 withstood attempts and undermined guarantees by the armies of Nigeria and neighboring countries to defeat them.3 After IS lost its “territorial caliphate” in Iraq and Syria to US-aligned military coalitions in 2019, ISWAP became increasingly important for sustaining IS’s global project. The potentially catastrophic effects for Nigeria, Africa, and the international community of ISWAP’s continuing as a hub for global jihadism4 revive questions that still require adequate answers. Are previous explanations about why this Nigerian group emerged one year after the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks correct? What drove this group’s embeddedness in global jihad and its becoming an IS province? And how did the group become so violent in such a short time? Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, where are ISWAP’s own internal factions and its rival Nigerian jihadist groups—one aligned with al-Qaeda and another loyal to, but unrecognized by, IS—headed next? This book answers these questions and more.

1

2

Unmasking Boko Haram

Understanding Names Boko Haram is an inaccurate moniker encompassing the formal names of several jihadist groups, including ISWAP, that originate from one Nigerian jihadist family. Understanding this moniker’s genesis is important. After the group’s 2002 founding, media and villagers referred to group members at their camp based in Kanama, Yobe State, as the Taliban. The Kanama camp members welcomed being called the Taliban because the Afghan Taliban inspired them. However, camp members had no formal name for their group and usually called themselves mujahidin (jihadists), muhajirun (emigrants), or Kanama brothers. After Nigerian security forces destroyed the Kanama camp in 2003, outsiders still called group members the Taliban. However, members began calling themselves Yusufiya (Muhammed Yusuf’s followers), referring to the group sole leader from 2004 to 2009. Only in 2007 did the new moniker Boko Haram emerge, meaning “Western education is blasphemous.” It was assigned by rival Muslim scholars and adopted by Nigeria’s government and media to caricature Muhammed Yusuf’s prohibiting Muslims from obtaining Western education in secular schools. However, Yusuf’s dawa (preaching) was primarily about jihad, establishing an Islamic state, Nigerian and Western abuses of Muslims, and the illegitimacy of constitutional democracy. His dawa was only secondarily about boko haram. Considering this moniker’s prevalence, the etymology of boko haram requires explanation. Hausa dictionaries define boko as “fraudulence, sham, or inauthenticity”; linguists suggest boko only coincidentally resembles the English word book and is actually derived from Hausa’s word for “magic,” “deception,” or “superstition”: boka.5 Western education, according to Muhammed Yusuf and this definition, offers some benefits but is untrustworthy and should be accepted only when it does not contradict authentic Islamic knowledge. It is, therefore, untrue that Yusuf believed all Western education was haram (“blasphemous”) or that books were prohibited. What was prohibited were boko teachings like Darwinism, English common law, or classical philosophy because they could lead to questioning the Quran, abandoning sharia (Islamic law) and atheism, as well as boko norms like mixed-gender education, singing the national anthem, and English-medium education because they undermined Islamic gender codes, the shahada (Islamic testimony of faith), and Arabic. The group only announced a formal name after Nigerian security forces killed Muhammed Yusuf and Abubakar Shekau succeeded Yusuf in 2010. Shekau named the group Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad,6 which translates to Salafi Muslim Group for Preaching and Jihad. This name lacked convenient acronyms, and its length and Arabic origin made it difficult for non-native Arabic speakers in Nigeria and abroad to pronounce or remember it. Moreover, the name bestowed religious legitimacy, which

Boko Haram and Global Jihad

3

Shekau’s Muslim rivals sought to challenge. Therefore, Nigerian Islamic scholars (ulama), journalists, and officials still labeled the group Boko Haram. Muhammed Yusuf’s son, Abu Musab al-Barnawi (Abu Musab),7 however, asserted in an IS interview that “the name is a distortion by infidel media to tarnish the mujahidin’s reputation. . . . We reject this name.”8 The group known as Boko Haram was Nigeria’s only jihadist group until another one announced its formation in 2012. Calling itself Jamaat Ansarul Muslimina Fi Biladis Sudan, which in Arabic means Group of Muslim Supporters in Black Africa,9 it was founded by former Boko Haram members who opposed Shekau and consulted with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) before separating from their parent group. This group subsequently used an abbreviated name: Ansaru. Therefore, in 2012 Boko Haram was the larger group, and Ansaru was the smaller, but more tactically sophisticated, rival group. In March 2015, Shekau pledged loyalty (baya) to IS caliph Abubakar alBaghdadi after a courtship that started with the Chibok kidnapping. After alBaghdadi accepted it, IS renamed Boko Haram the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP). Boko Haram, or Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad, was superseded and became inactive. Ansaru still existed but was weakened by Shekau’s retaliation against its members for defecting. Thus, in 2015 there were two Nigerian jihadist groups: Shekau-led ISWAP and Ansaru. In August 2016, IS named Abu Musab as ISWAP leader and demoted Shekau, who announced he would not retract his loyalty to Abubakar alBaghdadi but would reassume leadership of Boko Haram, or Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad. Thus, Shekau revived the group that had been inactive since March 2015. From August 2016 until this book went to press, ISWAP and Boko Haram, or Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad, were the two main Nigerian jihadist groups, but they both also operated in Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. These two groups remained distinct from the third and smallest jihadist group, Ansaru. Nevertheless, in Nigeria and abroad, governments, media, and scholars still refer to this entire jihadist family—Boko Haram, ISWAP, Ansaru, and their predecessors—collectively as Boko Haram, as I also do in this book. However, Boko Haram will also specifically refer to the Nigerian jihadist community that existed from 1994 to 2002 and the groups that from 2002 until March 2015, and from August 2016 until the present, comprised the Taliban, Kanama brothers, Yusufiya, and Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad. ISWAP and Ansaru will also be called by their own names when discussed specifically. One cautionary note is necessary. Boko Haram has evolved significantly, and individuals’ associations with, and even support for, the early Boko Haram do not indicate support for Boko Haram after Muhammed Yusuf’s 2009 death or atrocities committed thereafter, including the Chibok kidnapping.

4

Unmasking Boko Haram

Boko Haram in Nigeria Any Boko Haram analysis requires an understanding of Nigeria. In an age when Islam and Christianity and the global north and south constantly intersect, few countries are worth examining more than Nigeria. With Nigeria’s population expected to reach 200 million in the 2020s, its people comprise nearly one-fifth of all Africans. Nigeria is also home to more Muslims and more Christians than any other African country, with approximately ninety million adherents of each faith. The UN further forecasts that Nigeria will be the world’s third most populous country, after India and China, by 2050.10 Nigeria is also a country of contradictions. One finds tech start-ups in the southern commercial hub, Lagos, which World Bank scholars predict will be the world’s most populous city by 2100.11 Yet in Lagos and other Nigerian cities, including Abuja, and countless villages, power outages and mobile phone network disruptions occur frequently. Nigeria also has more than two hundred ethnic groups united by English as their official language, which, like English common law, was inherited from Britain’s colonization of Nigeria from the 1880s to 1960. However, Hausa is spoken ubiquitously throughout the majority Muslim north while Yoruba and Igbo are the most commonly spoken languages in the majority Christian south. Nigeria’s four neighbors, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and Benin, use French as their lingua franca and have adopted France’s concept of secularism (laïcité) in their legal systems. However, Hausa is spoken to varying degrees in each of those countries and especially in southern Niger. Nigeria’s English-speaking elites regularly attend Western universities, but increasing numbers of Arabophone Nigerian Muslims have attended international Islamic universities in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Malaysia. As this book demonstrates, Islamic theologies unknown in Nigeria were “imported” to the country by diaspora Nigerians, especially from Saudi Arabia and Sudan, who contributed to Boko Haram’s genesis between 1994 and 2002.12 Boko Haram members are mostly Kanuri, which is a Muslim ethnolinguistic group based in the Lake Chad subregion, comprising around five million people in Nigeria’s northeastern Yobe and Borno States. Yobe was part of Borno until Nigeria carved out six new states in 1991. Before the war with Boko Haram began ravaging northeastern Nigeria in 2010, Yobe was ranked among the poorest of Nigerian states while Borno, which benefited from cross-border trade with Niger, Chad, and Cameroon and access to Lake Chad’s resources, was slightly above the national average.13 Both states’ economies have been severely affected by the conflict. Unbeknownst to those who consider Nigeria to be West African, the town of Gidimbari, Borno, where ISWAP killed 144 soldiers in a devastating attack in 2015, is located in Africa’s geographic center.14 To Gidimbari’s east is the

Map 1.1 Nigeria and the Lake Chad Subregion

6

Unmasking Boko Haram

larger town of Kukawa, with around 200,000 people. Like Gidimbari, it was largely under ISWAP’s control as this book went to press.15 Kukawa was the final seat of the Kanuri-led Kanem-Bornu empire, whose 1893 fall, after one millennium of dynastic rule, to a Sudanese warrior supporting Sudan’s antiBritish mahdi (eschatological redeemer of Islam)16 and then to European powers is history neither Boko Haram nor the Kanuris are soon to forget. Borno’s northeastern tip along Lake Chad is closer to Libya’s and Sudan’s borders than Lagos. Therefore, Boko Haram’s main operational areas in the Kanuri heartlands are no less Sahelian, Saharan, or Central African than West African. It should be unsurprising that several of Boko Haram’s first leaders were in Sudan, where trading, pilgrimage, refugee routes, and British colonial programs historically connected Borno to areas near Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. However, also notable is how Algerian jihadists contributed to Boko Haram’s genesis and the group’s evolution thereafter. Another contradiction about Nigeria is its reputation as the “Giant of Africa” despite Boko Haram’s time and again hitting above its weight class in battles against Nigeria’s army. Nigeria and its allies, including the United States, envisioned Nigeria as West Africa’s security guarantor. However, Nigeria has fallen short, and, contrarily, its neighbors have intervened on Nigerian territory to combat Boko Haram. The more Boko Haram requires Nigeria to expend military resources domestically, the less Nigeria can promote security abroad. As far as Nigeria’s military power projection is concerned, it appears to have been dealt knockout blows. Another contradiction is that despite Boko Haram’s and ISWAP’s loyalty to IS, neither group has pursued grisly killings of foreigners as a strategy even though thousands of expatriates work in Nigeria. Nor have ISWAP and Boko Haram launched campaigns to disrupt the vital southern Nigeria–based oil and gas sector, which has enabled Nigeria to become Africa’s largest oil and gas producer and one of the top sources of US oil purchases. Threats specific to foreigners, including engineers, diplomats, and parishioners, in Nigeria and Cameroon, in fact, have primarily come from AQIM-trained Nigerians and Ansaru members who are expert in bomb-making and conducting kidnappings. Nevertheless, both ISWAP and Boko Haram have targeted international aid organizations’ Nigerian employees, including men and women, Christians and Muslims. Altogether Boko Haram’s violence, the military’s response, and civilians fleeing their homes in the crossfire have created unprecedented crises in Nigeria and the Lake Chad subregion. More than one decade of fighting has also wrought devastation for hundreds of thousands of displaced people, tens of thousands of lost lives, and untold numbers of destroyed schools, homes, medical clinics, government buildings, places of worship, livestock, and other properties. The conflict’s epicenter—Borno—was once called the Home of Peace. Now it is the opposite, and there is no end in sight.

Map 1.2 The Sahel and the Middle East

7

8

Unmasking Boko Haram

Studying Boko Haram Whether Boko Haram is influenced by global jihadist trends and actors or local factors remains hotly debated and has led to different schools of thought.17 This book demonstrates that Boko Haram is rooted in a Bornobased Nigerian jihadist community whose leaders spent time abroad after 1994 and then attracted followers in Nigeria, especially after 9/11. This jihadist community subsequently merged with offshoots of Nigerian Salafi organizations, surfacing at Kanama camp in 2003. Like virtually all Salafis, those in Nigeria adhere to Islam’s largest branch, Sunni Islam, as opposed to Shia Islam, and engage in distinct religious practices. They strive, for example, to emulate the first three generations of Muslims from the seventh century (al-salaf al-salih), adopt literal approaches to scripture, reject innovations to Islam (bida), and show loyalty to Muslims (al-wala) while disavowing those opposing Islam (albara). Salafis in Nigeria and abroad may also declare takfir (excommunication) on Muslims promoting legal systems other than sharia and consider Salafi monotheism (tawhid) as pure but that of non-Salafi Muslims, Jews, Christians, and others as polytheistic (shirk). Boko Haram and virtually all jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda and IS, are Salafi, but what distinguishes them ideologically from mainstream Salafis is that they additionally believe violent jihad (struggle) may be waged against those they deem to be Muslim apostates (murtadun), especially rulers (taghut), and non-Muslim infidels (kuffar). Thus, jihadist groups, including Boko Haram and AQIM’s and al-Shabaab’s predecessors, commonly emerge alongside, but then separate from, more moderate Salafi parent groups. Jihadist groups, including Boko Haram, also tend to fight and factionalize internally over ideological disagreements concerning who precisely are apostates and when it is lawful to kill apostates and infidels. Although several Boko Haram founders were introduced to Salafijihadi ideology abroad, the group also evolved in response to nationallevel dynamics, including central Nigeria–based Muslim-Christian violence; northern Nigeria–based intra-Muslim, and especially intra-Salafi, rivalries; and crackdowns by Nigerian security forces in northeastern Nigeria. Additionally, exogenous shocks reverberated in Nigeria and affected Boko Haram’s trajectory, including al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks, the US-led 2001 and 2003 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the France-led 2013 military intervention ousting jihadists from Mali, and Abubakar alBaghdadi’s 2014 caliphate declaration from Iraq. The ways these regional, national, and international forces produced the “Boko Haram phenomenon” 18 are evaluated throughout this study. Also explored, however, are how memories of precolonial West African jihads were repackaged in contemporary frameworks and intertwined with the twenty-firstcentury global jihads of al-Qaeda and IS in Boko Haram narratives,

Boko Haram and Global Jihad

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despite Middle Eastern jihadists’ often racialized attitudes toward, and unfamiliarity with, Nigeria. Proponents of the local school for interpreting Boko Haram attempt to “alienate Boko Haram from global jihadist movements,” including alQaeda and IS, and “deconstruct the theory linking Boko Haram to the Salafi movement in Nigeria and beyond.”19 They also prioritize secondary source literature and interviews with local officials and civilians over jihadist writings and statements.20 This school is represented in works by Caitriona Dowd, Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, Alexander Thurston, and others.21 It further explains Boko Haram as a homegrown movement whose leaders pledged loyalty to an Iraqi, Abubakar al-Baghdadi, and alBaghdadi’s successor (in ISWAP’s case), by arguing “there is no evidence of organizational links” with IS and the alliance with IS has been “good propaganda,” “primarily rhetorical,” and motivated by Boko Haram’s “weakness.”22 Pérouse de Montclos and Thurston also join Adam Higazi, Brandon Kendhammer, and Kyari Mohammed in reductively dismissing primary source–based evidence regarding AQIM’s support of Boko Haram before the latter joined IS.23 This study, in contrast, traces Boko Haram’s evolution as a latecomer to, but rapidly rising group in, the global jihadist movement before it pledged loyalty to IS. This pledge resulted in IS providing military, financial, media, and strategic support to ISWAP and, perhaps most importantly, IS shaping ISWAP’s leadership and transmitting its identity and organizational culture to ISWAP. While the local school approach contributes important perspectives, there is a need to dig deeper, to provide a more carefully observed panoramic view, and to understand how international, national, regional, and local forces produced the Boko Haram phenomenon. This study departs from that school because previously overlooked and new evidence is introduced here regarding the Nigerian jihadists who founded Boko Haram and formed Kanama camp while maintaining organizational links to AQIM’s predecessor groups and communication lines to Pakistan-based al-Qaeda Central. Boko Haram’s 2002 founding was rooted less in local dynamics particular to northeastern Nigeria, or specifically Yobe and Borno, and more in Nigeria’s post-1994 jihadist community’s mobilization in response to triple effects from (1) al-Qaeda’s post-9/11 call to global jihad; (2) allegations that Christians and Westerners were undermining Islam in Nigeria, compounded by pan-Islamism’s assertion that Nigerian Muslims were under threat like their Muslim Afghan and Iraqi brothers; and (3) the failure of sharia implementation to meet Nigerian Salafis’ expectations. There is also compelling evidence that jihadism existed among Nigerian Salafis in 1994, if not earlier. This is one decade before Thurston alleges Muhammed Yusuf “tried to smuggle jihadist thought” into Nigeria’s Salafi community.24 Although jihadist thought was “imported” to Nigeria

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Unmasking Boko Haram

by Nigerians returning from abroad and Algerian jihadists arriving in Nigeria, jihadism especially resonated in Nigeria after 9/11.25 Jihadism and other forms of Muslim dissent, including the demand for an Islamic state governed by sharia to replace Nigeria’s British-inherited political and legal systems, have since 9/11 been embodied in Boko Haram. What made Muhammed Yusuf exceptional was not pioneering jihadism in Nigeria, but being the last Nigerian Salafi preacher with a wide following still promoting jihadist thought by the time of his 2009 death. This leads to another observation: rather than viewing Boko Haram through the lens of “locally grounded interactions between religion and politics,” this study finds religion has become so fused with politics in Nigeria that Nigerian Salafis and Nigerian politicians mirror one another.26 Boko Haram differs from Nigerian Salafi organizations because Boko Haram opposes politics altogether so long as the government does not fully adhere to sharia. The more accurate lens views Boko Haram versus the accommodation of religion, especially Islam, with Nigerian politics and the nondenominational and secular Nigerian state. This study also assesses Boko Haram’s associations with Yobe and Borno politicians from 2002 to 2007 to have been more tactical and peripheral than the “alliance” that is asserted in other literature.27 Saudi Arabia has also (1) provided Nigerian Salafi organizations with resources to expand since 1978, prior to Iran’s Islamic Revolution; (2) incentivized Nigerian Salafis to remain loyal and connected to Saudi Arabia after the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War; and (3) urged Salafis not only in Nigeria but also internationally to separate from jihadists after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and al-Qaeda’s first large-scale attacks in Saudi Arabia that same year. These factors underscore “internationally grounded interactions” between religion and geopolitics in understanding why Boko Haram rebelled against Nigeria’s government and its Salafi “collaborators.” Nigeria’s most prominent Muslims, including Salafis, today promote constitutional democracy, Western-style education, and cordial relations with Western countries and Christians. They are no less part of the Pax Americana world order than Boko Haram is the opposite.28 And Boko Haram views those Salafis as apostates and enemies. Lastly, another difference between this study and the local school is that Arabic and Hausa sources are introduced here that have rarely or often never been cited previously to assess Boko Haram’s relationships with IS and alQaeda. These include correspondences from Boko Haram and AQIM leaders discussing jihad in Nigeria that were found in Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound in 2011, including those in the CIA’s final November 2017 release of all the compound’s documents.29 Other sources include Algerian AQIM officials’ Arabic-language memoirs mentioning the 1994 jihadist expansion to Nigeria, mid-2000s French-language reports about Algerian

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jihadists’ cooperating with Nigerian jihadists from 1994 to 2004, declassified post-9/11 US government reports about al-Qaeda in the Sahel and Nigeria, and documents captured by US forces in Baghdad regarding post-9/11 financial transfers. This book also unearths Nigerian government correspondences to the UN revealing financial relationships between Nigerian Salafis, Islamic charity employees, AQIM’s predecessors, and Boko Haram. These materials help piece together international, national, and regional dimensions of Boko Haram’s 1994 origins, 2002 founding, and evolution thereafter. Furthermore, archived social media accounts were reviewed dating from 2013, the year before Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s caliphate declaration, to 2015, when Boko Haram pledged loyalty to IS. This was crucial to understanding how, why, and with whom Nigerian jihadists established communication lines to IS in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Sudan. Also evaluated are Kanuri- and Hausa-language audios from ISWAP’s shura (consultative council), Arabiclanguage correspondences from Tunisia-based al-Qaeda and IS representatives to Boko Haram before its 2015 pledge to IS, and advice from a Syriabased Saudi IS theologian to ISWAP after the pledge. This book’s employment of exclusive attack data sets further assists in understanding Boko Haram’s strategic shifts, especially its expansion from Borno to central Nigeria in 2011–2012 and its withdrawal from Borno’s capital, Maiduguri, to rural Borno before conquering territory in 2013– 2014. Additionally, through examining primary source documents this study unmasks jihadist couriers who established lines for financing, training, and advising between ISWAP and IS’s Libyan provinces in 2015–2016, and before then between Boko Haram and AQIM, al-Shabaab, and Bin Laden’s deputies in al-Qaeda Central. Although conducting research on Boko Haram and other clandestine violent nonstate organizations is like putting together puzzles without all the pieces, there is often unmistakable evidence that cannot be dismissed, pointing to events taking place behind the scenes, even when there is no hard evidence. Through judicious weighing of sources and trends, it is imperative to suggest probabilities of what evidence indicates, especially when astonishing or near-impossible coincidences otherwise exist, such as Boko Haram’s first barracks raids just after Nigerian jihadists returned to Nigeria from Mali in 2013. This analysis, therefore, systematically presents new evidence and connects dots between events chronologically to identify “trigger mechanisms” affecting Boko Haram’s trajectory.30 This methodology emphasizes the importance of employing abductive reasoning when it is “not possible for the analyst to have access to all the facts that are necessary to come up with an explanation of some phenomenon,” such as, for example, why Boko Haram specifically targeted churches with suicide car bombings in 2012 but not thereafter.31 This study, therefore, proposes most likely hypotheses and offers plausible explanations for phe-

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Unmasking Boko Haram

nomena about which there is virtually no way of knowing facts with absolute certainty. Abductive reasoning is especially useful when encountering puzzling facts, anomalies, and inherently incomplete sets of observations.32 Deductive and inductive reasoning, in contrast, are ideal for researching less clandestine actors, such as market traders, about whom data can easily, safely, and repeatedly be tested. Markets and traders are, for example, much more accessible, or researchable, than Boko Haram’s suicide bomb–makers and bomb-making workshops. Testing, according to abductive methodologies, compels researchers to iteratively produce data that justify more plausible hypotheses than preexisting ones or that make preexisting hypotheses more valid based on criteria such as evaluating a hypothesis’s conciseness and reasonableness, reliability of evidence, internal consistency, and similarity with analogous events and paradigms. One illustrative example of abductive reasoning in this book is the “curious circumstance” in which Boko Haram’s Abu Musab–managed Twitter account initially neglected to mention the group’s leader, Shekau (the premise).33 By probing backward (ab duco), I hypothesized Shekau was injured and temporarily comatose, suddenly became camera shy, was whimsically forgotten about by Abu Musab, or his theology was disliked by Abu Musab. I justified that the latter (disliking Shekau’s theology) was the most plausible hypothesis because it contained the most “probative force” based on contextual factors described in the book about Abu Musab’s adversarial relationship with Shekau over theological matters.34 There was, however, no guarantee this was the correct hypothesis because there was inherently incomplete evidence, including Abu Musab’s inaccessibility for interviews.35 Moreover, even if I braved visiting Abu Musab’s camp to interview him, it still might be impossible to establish with absolute certainty his reasons for excluding Shekau from the Twitter account since people may lie, forget, or never be able to explain the psychology behind their actions in “past mental states” even when intending to be truthful.36 Furthermore, Abu Musab’s clandestineness would make replicating and corroborating the accuracy of my interview findings impossible for other scholars, unlike if I interviewed market traders. Additionally, abductive reasoning requires recognizing any conclusion’s defeasibility and remaining alert to new evidence or smoking guns emerging, such as internal Boko Haram medical records that hypothetically surfaced indicating Shekau was comatose in January 2015 when the Twitter account was launched. This could retroductively reveal that my hypothesis about Abu Musab’s disliking Shekau’s theology to explain Shekau’s nonappearance on the Twitter account was less valid than other hypotheses.37 Alternatively, newly arrested media team members’ statements about Abu Musab’s disallowing mention of Shekau on the Twitter account until Shekau agreed not to label Muslim civilians outside Boko Haram’s territory as infidels and kill

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them would boost my initial hypothesis and demonstrate its “scientific acumen.”38 Since phenomena are rarely monocausal, competing hypotheses may simultaneously coexist. Abu Musab, for example, disliked Shekau’s theology, but I later found he also demanded Shekau agree to pledge loyalty to alBaghdadi before he could appear on the Twitter account. This and other analyses demonstrate how this methodology requires employing the three most fundamental skills in intelligence analysis: (1) subject matter, foreign language, and cultural expertise (corresponding to jihadism and Boko Haram, Arabic and Hausa, and Africa and Nigeria in this study); (2) rigor to transparently organize and present evidence; and (3) creativity to develop evidence-based explanations that have “not been thought about before” and presented in any literature.39 This methodological approach helps overcome the “cyclical narratives” that have persisted in reports on Boko Haram since 2009 that have often not produced significant “new knowledge.”40 While abductive reasoning has been mistaken for random speculation and derided by others studying Boko Haram, various fields do employ it, including law and detective work (as “informed speculation”), medicine, and natural sciences.41 In fact, part of the reason why local school proponents have not offered sufficient explanations for pivotal events such as Boko Haram’s 2012 suicide car bombing campaign, 2013 barracks raids in Borno, 2014 international kidnapping-for-ransom operations in Cameroon, 2015 opening of social media accounts, and 2016 barracks raids in Niger—and have overlooked regional and internal organizational factors triggering them—is not only their avoidance of primary sources but also their reliance upon approaches intended for studying nonclandestine actors like refugees, Salafi scholars, herders and farmers, or market traders. The tendency to halt analysis before hypotheses can be generated through employing abductive reasoning has resulted in pivotal events remaining unexplained.42 Crucial to employing abductive reasoning is recognizing that data about clandestine organizations can often be explained only through hypotheses measured from most-to-least plausible but not ascertained to the same degree of certitude as data about nonclandestine actors. However, abductive reasoning is not random speculation, and equating it as such can be likened to reducing quantitative research to bean counting. Readers will also benefit from three exclusive interviews with the Kanama camp founder’s companion presented for the first time in this book. Kanama was the rural Yobe village near Nigeria’s border with Niger where the “Taliban” was based before Nigerian security forces destroyed Kanama camp in 2003. The companion described students from Borno and southern Nigeria traveling to Khartoum and those they met among Bin Laden’s deputies in Khartoum before forming Kanama camp. I also interviewed self-described Ansaru associates and Nigerians who have communicated with Boko Haram and ISWAP leaders. This included

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their mediations for releasing the Chibok schoolgirls conducted during my fieldwork in Borno and other Nigerian states as well as Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Mauritania, Algeria, and Tunisia between 2014 and 2018. And while relationships between Boko Haram and other jihadist groups have been investigated from ideological, financial, and training angles, Boko Haram’s military tactics are also assessed in this study and compared to AQIM, al-Shabaab, and IS to determine the extent to which Boko Haram’s military improvements, especially suicide car bombings, barracks raids, international kidnappings for ransom, rocket-making, and uparmoring sport-utility vehicles, were acquired or inspired locally, regionally, or even virtually through online communications. Finally, analysis is extended to other rarely explored domains, such as Boko Haram–related posts on websites of jihadist ideologues, including Abu Muhammed alMaqdisi and Anwar al-Awlaki, Boko Haram’s narratives, media branding, and platforms for messaging dissemination, and Boko Haram’s nasheeds (Islamic hymns), which reveal intersections between local and international inspirations, identities, and influences. Readers are encouraged to explore sources at this book’s companion website: https://unmaskingbokoharam.com. Hyperlinks to interviews with the Kanama camp founder’s companion, dozens of now-censored Boko Haram social media postings, and hundreds of other videos, audios, and written statements referenced in this book’s endnotes and bibliography are found on the website. Primary sources were assessed for inclusion in this study according to three main criteria: (1) consistency with known facts and trends such that it was clear the source was not producing misinformation and intended to provide a factual account whether or not the source was leaked, captured, or intentionally published; (2) confirmation of the identity of the group or individual responsible for producing the source and of the source’s authenticity; and (3) corroboration that the producer of the source could know details presented in the source firsthand or through close contacts. Potential biases of sources and jihadists’ motivations for releasing previously clandestine information are also assessed in this study. Archiving sources on this book’s companion website is a response to growing demand for improving transparency in qualitative research by creating online appendices and digitizing sources when feasible.43 It is also a response to censorship of jihadist materials on websites and social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.44 While deemed necessary for counterterrorism purposes, this has led to countless jihadist videos, statements, treatises, analyses, correspondences, nasheeds, Tweets, and Facebook postings being erased from the Internet and becoming irretrievable for researchers, and it has forced jihadists, including ISWAP, Boko Haram, and Ansaru, to shift to other less rigorously censored deep web platforms. Providing access especially to older Boko Haram materials on the companion

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website will assist future researchers seeking to understand the genesis of, and resolve conflicts related to, jihadism in Nigeria and West Africa. Structure of the Book Following this introduction, Chapter 2 unmasks the founders of Boko Haram and Ansaru whose common thread was meeting Bin Laden’s deputies in Khartoum. Besides explaining how they arrived in Sudan and what they did upon returning to the Sahel and Nigeria, the chapter defines pan-Islamism, global jihadist movement, and al-Qaeda Central. The chapter further reviews AQIM predecessor groups’ expansion from Algeria to Nigeria and their interactions with Salafi scholars. Diaspora contributions to Nigeria’s jihadist community and AQIM predecessor’s providing a haven for Nigerian jihadists after Kanama camp’s fall are also discussed. Chapter 3 examines relationships between Boko Haram and Pakistanbased al-Qaeda and the missions in the Sahel and Nigeria of two al-Qaeda envoys after 9/11. It also assesses al-Qaeda financing to Boko Haram and the role AQIM predecessors played intermediating between al-Qaeda and Boko Haram. Additionally, al-Qaeda strategy in Nigeria is analyzed based on court documents exclusively obtained for this research. Chapter 4 explains how Saudi, Iranian, and Libyan geopolitical competition contributed to the formation of Nigerian Shia and Salafi organizations from which Muhammed Yusuf emerged and that challenged the religious authority of centuries-old Sufi orders. This chapter also begins a recurring discussion throughout the book about how Nigerian Shias’ revolutionary discourses echoed in Boko Haram’s pronouncements regarding the Nigerian state in a way that Salafi discourses did not. Boko Haram is also compared to northern Nigeria’s Maitatsine movement, whose unorthodox mahdism factored into Yusuf’s family history and left legacies rhyming with Yusuf’s successor, Shekau. The impact of 9/11, Muslim-Christian violence, blasphemy cases, and sharia implementation on mobilizing Nigerian jihadists and their university-educated recruits to form Kanama camp is also covered. Broken alliances are examined in Chapter 5, specifically between Nigerian Salafis and Muhammed Yusuf, and Yusuf and Nigeria’s jihadist community. It assesses why leading Nigerian Salafi scholars supported the security forces’ destruction of Kanama camp and why Saudi Arabia–based reconciliation attempts between Nigerian Salafis and Yusuf failed. It further explains how Yusuf reintegrated remnants of Nigeria’s jihadist community into Boko Haram after 2004, the structure of the organization Yusuf built in Nigeria, how Yusuf and his followers concealed ties to AQIM, and why Nigerian Salafis could not undermine Yusuf’s dawa. Chapter 6 provides new details about Boko Haram’s role in the assassination of prominent Nigerian Salafi scholar, Shaikh Jaafar Mahmud Adam. It

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also discusses the preaching of Yusuf and his deputies, including their embrace of al-Qaeda tactics previously unseen in Nigeria, such as suicide bombings, before Boko Haram launched another uprising and Nigerian security forces backed by Nigerian Islamic scholars and politicians attempted to destroy Boko Haram again. Revealed in Chapter 7 is how after Yusuf’s 2009 death, Boko Haram allied with al-Qaeda affiliates. This involved coordinating trainings with AQIM and, to a lesser extent, al-Shabaab; reestablishing communication lines to al-Qaeda Central, including Bin Laden, through Algerian, Mauritanian, and Libyan intermediaries; and creating nasheeds about Abubakar Shekau and Boko Haram’s creed (aqida). During this phase, Boko Haram exploited jihadist web forums and new media like Facebook and mobile phone text messaging to announce the impending jihad to global jihadist and northern Nigerian audiences. Chapter 8 analyzes the impact of AQIM and al-Shabaab support to Boko Haram, AQIM’s approval of Ansaru’s separation from Boko Haram, and Ansaru’s attempt to become both a global jihadist group and a central Nigeria-based militia defending Muslims during clashes with Christians. It also describes Ansaru’s efforts to win Nigerian Salafi scholars’ support and recruit locally in Nigeria and how Shekau eventually dismantled Ansaru and reincorporated elite cadres of former Ansaru, AQIM-trained, and Malibased jihadists into Boko Haram before conquering territory in 2013. The role Algerian jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar45 played in brokering Ansaru– Boko Haram reconciliation is also examined. Virtual contacts between Boko Haram, Ansaru, and IS jihadist media activists are analyzed in Chapter 9. Also evaluated are Boko Haram’s asymmetric responses to subregional military pressure, contradictions surrounding the group’s deploying female suicide bombers,46 fighters’ ideological, financial, and revenge-based motivations for joining the group, and traffickers in Niger, Chad, and Cameroon and funders further abroad supporting Boko Haram. Also documented are Boko Haram’s actual mediators, rogue jihadists falsely claiming to represent Boko Haram in negotiations, and Boko Haram’s increasing brutalities in conquered territories, which compelled Abu Musab and other commanders to depose Shekau. This chapter further examines ethnic, regional, and linguistic fault lines in West African jihadism that contributed to Ansaru’s and especially Boko Haram’s distinctive evolution; compares Shekau to mahdists of generations past, especially Maitatsine; and explains why the Chibok kidnapping was the turning point on Boko Haram’s path to becoming IS’s West Africa Province. Chapter 10 analyzes Boko Haram’s pledge to IS, including Boko Haram’s official Twitter account and videos promoting the pledge; reasons behind IS’s August 2016 announcement of Abu Musab as leader; and ISWAP’s March 2019 dethronement of Abu Musab. It further assesses IS

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command and control over ISWAP, including its guidance regarding the “slavery” of Christian women; Abu Musab’s loyalties to IS and al-Qaeda; Nigerian jihadists’ experiences with IS in Libya; and ISWAP’s relationships with IS-loyal fighters operating in the Mali-Niger-Burkina Faso tri-border region who formally became part of ISWAP in March 2019. After profiling Boko Haram’s “global network” in Kano (Chapter 6), Shekau loyalists in Maiduguri (Chapter 7), takfir-prone cells in Kogi State and media activists online (Chapter 8), and recruits from Cameroon (Chapter 9), this chapter also profiles Chadian commanders. Finally, the chapter details ISWAP’s postMarch 2019 internal factionalization, executions of Christians and aid workers, and responses to the Nigerian army’s “supercamps” strategy; Boko Haram’s post-March 2019 operations around Lake Chad; and ISWAP’s and Ansaru’s newly established cells in northwestern Nigeria. This leads to a final examination of whether Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s legacy has superseded that of Muhammed Yusuf among ISWAP’s and Boko Haram’s future leaders, especially child soldiers on the verge of becoming battle-ready. While one can never know how lasting ISWAP’s alliance with IS will be and what evolution jihadists in Nigeria and the Lake Chad subregion will undergo in the future, Chapter 11 addresses challenges in negotiating with ISWAP and Boko Haram and undermining ISWAP’s theology and military capabilities. It also considers whether violence in pursuit of religious objectives is becoming obsolete for Nigerian Muslims, including Salafis, especially because of lessons learned from the Boko Haram experience. The chapter further highlights the paradox of combating a group like ISWAP, which is becoming more interconnected with global jihadists but is still embedded locally, especially around Lake Chad, and exists alongside, and in competition with, Boko Haram and Ansaru. The strength of jihadist groups in Nigeria has ebbed and flowed, but ISWAP, Boko Haram, and Ansaru are nowhere near defeated. To understand their trajectory both ideologically and operationally at this time of transition in the jihadist politics of Nigeria, the Lake Chad subregion, and the Sahel, it is necessary to return to Nigerian jihadism’s somewhat distant origins in 1994. Let us begin by investigating how the travels, encounters, and transformations in the lives of Nigerians in Sudan that year engendered the Boko Haram phenomenon. 1. IS, Dabiq no. 4, 15. 2. Searcey and Santora, “Boko Haram Ranked Ahead.” 3. Punch, “Boko Haram Technically Defeated.” 4. For definitions of global jihadism, Salafi jihadism, Salafism, jihadism, Islamism, takfirism, and their variations, see Hegghammer, “Jihadi Salafis,” 244–266. On the jihadismIslamism “rupture,” see Lahoud, Jihadis’ Path, 116, 155. 5. Newman, “Etymology.”

Notes

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6. This book romanizes Arabic words, but uses the Arabic letter ayn (‘) when needed to distinguish a word’s meaning. Boko Haram spells its name in English as “Jama‘atu Ahlis-Sunnah Lidda‘awati Wal Jihad.” AQIM shura council member Abu Asim Hayyan was in an Algerian group of that same name from 1998 to 2004. See Hayyan, “Stations,” 4. 7. Real name: Habib Yusuf; Al-Barnawi means “from Borno.” 8. IS, Al-Naba no. 41, 8–9. 9. The group also used the acronym JAMBS. 10. UN Population Division, “World Population Prospects.” 11. Hoornwegg and Pope, “Population Predictions,” 199. 12. Pantami, “Theology and Jurisprudence,” 4. 13. NBS, “Poverty Profile for Nigeria,” 87. 14. Gidimbari can also be written as “Gudumbali.” Africa This Time, “Planning to Visit?”; Haruna, “Remembering Nigeria’s Fallen”; ISWAP, “The Outcome Is Best,” 2:12. 15. The Nation, “Boko Haram in Control.” 16. On mahdism, see Njeuma, “Adamawa and Mahdism.” 17. Zenn, “Primer.” 18. Brigaglia and Iocchi, “Some Advice,” 27. 19. Ibid.; Musa Ibrahim, “In Search of a Plausible Theory,” 25, 28. 20. K. Mohammed, “Origins of Boko Haram,” 589–590. 21. Dowd and Raleigh, “Myth of Global Islamic Terrorism”; Pérouse de Montclos, “Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria”; Thurston, Boko Haram. See also Seignobos, “Boko Haram and Lake Chad.” 22. K. Mohammed, “Origins of Boko Haram,” 599; Higazi, “Mobilisation,” 309; MacEachern, Searching for Boko Haram, 187; Thurston, Boko Haram, 268; ISWAP, “Part 2: Slay,” 18:00. 23. Higazi et al., “Response,” 210; K. Mohammed, “Origins of Boko Haram,” 584. 24. Thurston, Boko Haram, 120; see also Lamido, “Book Review,” 6; Brigaglia, “Slicing Off the Tumour,” 218. 25. Pantami, “Theology and Jurisprudence,” 4. 26. Thurston, Boko Haram, 13. 27. Ibid., 123. 28. Brigaglia, “Popular Discourses,” 20. 29. CIA, “CIA Releases.” 30. US Government, “Tradecraft Primer,” 13, 22–24. 31. Swedberg, “Does Speculation Belong?” 12. 32. Walton, “Abductive,” 143, 151, 164; Gold, Walton, and Cureton, “Theorising and Practitioners in HRD,” 3. 33. Walton, “Abductive,” 144–145. 34. Ibid., 154. 35. Moore, “Critical Thinking,” 4. 36. Slobogin, Proving, 39–44. 37. Walton, “Abductive,” 145. 38. Swedberg, “Does Speculation Belong?” 13. 39. Cátedra Servicios de Inteligencia, “Randolph,” 2:30–4:16. 40. Kassim, Twitter, December 26, 2019; “New [production of] knowledge,” or “‘Mode 2’ knowledge,” is associated with abductive reasoning. See Gold, Walton, and Cureton, “Theorising and Practitioners in HRD,” 16. 41. Higazi et al., “Response,” 203; Walton, “Abductive,” 146; Slobogin, Proving, 39–57. See also Swedberg, “Does Speculation Belong?” 9 and Brigaglia, “Popular Discourses,” 11–14. 42. Swedberg, “Does Speculation Belong?” 9. 43. Boas, “Comment.” 44. Although Twitter is a “public space” and this study cites multiple jihadist Twitter accounts, Twitter accounts of journalists, academics, or researchers are generally cited only when Tweets (1) are of a public and academic nature, such as sharing one’s research findings; (2) reflect the account holder’s publicly stated views and have not been deleted; and (3) do not risk causing reputational or other harm to the account holder or anyone else. 45. Also known as Khalid Abu al-Abbas and Belouar (“One-Eyed”). 46. Some suicide bombers, both female and male, are involuntary; hence “suicide” is not the appropriate term in all cases.

2 Nigerian Jihadists in Sudan and the Sahel

In the 1980s, citizens of virtually all Middle Eastern countries had already joined the emerging global jihadist movement. Yet, there were no known Nigerians in the movement. Only in the 1990s did the first Nigerians, Muhammed Ali1 and Khalid al-Barnawi, meet Sudan-based al-Qaeda members and subsequently encourage other Nigerians to join. Thus, the Nigerian jihadist community initially depended on strikingly few actors. Nigeria’s First Jihadists Two reasons why Nigerians belatedly joined the global jihadist movement were Nigeria’s lack of armed Islamist movements like those in the Middle East and of logistics routes to the 1980s Afghan jihad. Nigerians like Muhammed Ali and Khalid al-Barnawi instead became initiated in the mid1990s jihadist hub, Sudan, where Osama bin Laden lived from 1991 to 1996. However, not only was Afghanistan more geographically and emotionally distant from Nigeria than the Middle East, but also the Afghan jihad was overshadowed by Iran’s dramatic 1979 Islamic Revolution in Nigeria and was interpreted by some Nigerian Muslims not as Islamic resistance or jihad but rather as Cold War geopolitics and countering “Russian colonialism.”2 Only in 1986 did a preacher’s supporters first call for a “religious jihad against non-Muslims” in Nigeria. This occurred after conferences were held about the Sokoto Caliphate where academics concluded Islam would prevail in “growing confrontation between Islam and Kufr (Infidelity).”3 The Sokoto Caliphate, founded in 1804, emerged through the jihad of Usman dan Fodio, who was Sufi (Muslim mystic) and Fulani. However, since Nigeria’s 1960 independence, his legacy inspired Muslims across denominations and ethnicities who desired to “re-Islamize” Nigerian institutions.4

19

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The primary recruiter for the Afghan jihad, the Palestinian Abdullah Azzam, revealed Nigeria nevertheless could become fertile ground for jihadism. Azzam, for example, described how his deputy, the Palestinian Tamim al-Adnani, became the “talk of the town” in 1988 after conducting Nigeria-based lectures.5 If al-Adnani’s promotion of jihad that would “not stop . . . even after the liberation of Afghanistan” was as popular in Nigeria as al-Adnani reported to Azzam upon returning to the mujahidin’s base in Peshawar, Pakistan, one can infer Nigerians donated financially to the Afghan jihad and envisioned jihad in Nigeria.6 Al-Adnani’s visiting only Nigeria in sub-Saharan Africa further indicated he recognized the potential of Nigeria’s large Muslim population and wealth for recruitment and funding. Three years after al-Adnani’s Nigeria tour, Bin Laden relocated from Afghanistan to Khartoum, Sudan, where Nigerians who never traveled to Afghanistan could now encounter al-Qaeda members through regional business, study, or travel. Khalid al-Barnawi arrived in Khartoum around 1989 intending to continue to Afghanistan. However, after learning the Soviet army had withdrawn from Afghanistan and that Afghan factions were fighting each other, he remained in Sudan. He reportedly met Khartoum-based Afghan jihad veterans, including Bin Laden’s Egyptian deputy, Muhammed Atef,7 and pledged baya (loyalty) to Bin Laden.8 Al-Barnawi can, therefore, be considered Nigeria’s first al-Qaeda member following Bin Laden’s founding of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan around 1987. Al-Barnawi’s attempt to join the Afghan jihad and meeting Sudanbased al-Qaeda members was atypical. It only occurred because al-Barnawi was raised in Saudi Arabia and Mauritania, where he later met jihadist scholars, and was exposed to Afghan jihad logistics networks more than he would have been in Nigeria.9 His upbringing also meant he could return from Sudan to the Sahel to join jihadists supporting Bin Laden’s mission, including in Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group (GIA). The GIA formed after Algeria’s military canceled 1991 elections won by the Islamist political party, Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). Afterward, Bin Laden–financed Afghan jihad veterans from Algeria fought Algeria’s government alongside FIS’s armed wing and other Islamist youths in the GIA. Bin Laden, however, stopped supporting the GIA after sending couriers to the group, including Libyan Berber Afghan jihad veteran Attiyatullah alLibi (Attiya).10 He informed Bin Laden that GIA leaders were uninterested in al-Qaeda’s international goals, including hosting training camps for nonAlgerians, and even assassinated the GIA’s Libyan fighters.11 The GIA’s Algerian leaders also resented Afghan jihad veterans’ influence and became obsessed with Salafi purity, practicing excessive takfir (excommunication) by declaring all Algerians except GIA members as infidels and massacring civilians who they deemed apostates for not joining the GIA. Bin Laden consequently encouraged al-Qaeda-loyal GIA members to defect in 1996.

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They then formed Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in 1998, whose membership included al-Barnawi. The demand for weapons and Algerian military pressure meant the GIA and GSPC, which became AQIM in 2007, needed rear bases in the Sahel.12 Therefore, jihadists like al-Barnawi, who knew the terrain and societies from Algeria to northern Nigeria, were invaluable. Al-Barnawi thus became companion to Algerian jihadist trafficking, kidnapping, and special operations mastermind Mokhtar Belmokhtar. He had traveled to Afghanistan around 1990 but returned to Algeria through Morocco in 1992 because Morocco supported the GIA to undermine its geopolitical rival Algeria, which rejected Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara.13 France eventually pressured Morocco to cease supporting the GIA, which is why the GIA subsequently based in Khartoum.14 After Belmokhtar’s Algeria-based Katibat Shahida (Martyr Brigade) killed five French, Canadian, British, and Tunisian engineers in Algeria in 1995, Belmokhtar contacted the GIA’s Khartoum-based leadership, which designated him to head the GIA’s operations in the Sahel, where he remained for most of the next two decades.15 Both Belmokhtar and al-Barnawi therefore played roles in kidnapping Sahel-based foreigners and the GSPC’s landmark 2005 attack on Mauritania’s Lemgheity military barracks.16 Al-Barnawi’s relationship with Belmokhtar also enabled al-Barnawi to liaise between Algerian and Nigerian jihadists from the mid-1990s onward. Pan-Islamism and Global Jihad in Africa After Bin Laden’s arrival in Sudan, and especially after his return to Afghanistan, al-Qaeda trained Muslims who were expected to transnationalize preexisting Islamist militant groups in their home countries. Members close to Bin Laden personally, including Attiya, however, supported alQaeda Central and followed Bin Laden’s orders through a chain of command. Although there were no Nigerian Islamist militant groups in the 1990s, there were Nigerian Muslims at international Islamic universities funded by Saudi Arabia, other Gulf countries, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).17 These universities trained students in the “Salafist view of Islam,” but Khartoum-based International University of Africa18 especially provided Africans with “means to compete with Christian missionaries” and Sufis. Despite being Sunni Muslims, Sufis engaged in practices like praying in mosques built around shrines memorializing saints, which Salafis often considered to be idol worship and polytheism.19 The post-1940s rise of Saudi Arabia, whose indigenous Salafi branch, founded in the eighteenth century, is called Wahhabism,20 furthered antiSufi agitation in countries receiving Saudi patronage, including Nigeria. Founded in 1961, the Islamic University of Medina (IUM), which hosted more Nigerians than any other African nationality in the 1990s, was one of

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three international Islamic institutions in western Saudi Arabia’s Hijaz region responsible for spreading pan-Islamism from the 1960s onward.21 The others were Mecca-based charity Muslim World League (MWL), founded in 1962, and Jedda-based OIC, founded in 1969. They exposed employees, students, and beneficiaries to pan-Islamism’s “soft discourse,” arguing that “Muslims were threatened and should help one another.”22 Regardless of denomination, post-1960s Islamists desired greater influence of Islam in legal, social, political, and economic affairs in their countries. However, pan-Islamists especially identified with the supranational Muslim community (umma), which Saudi Arabia purported to lead. PanIslamism consequently aligned with Saudi foreign policy, especially opposing Saudi Arabia’s secular nationalist Arab rivals, and was influenced by Wahhabism. However, pan-Islamist institutions’ employees, including Abdullah Azzam, were often educated Sunni Muslim exiles associated with the global Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, which was suppressed in secular nationalist Arab countries like Egypt and Syria. Muslim Brotherhood members’ desire for political power meant they were more accommodating than Wahhabis of non-Salafis, including Sufis, to build coalitions with them. Muhammed Ali was exceptional among mid-1990s Khartoum-based Nigerians because he embraced global jihad predicated on Azzam’s adaptation to pan-Islamism, which demanded the umma provide military assistance to Muslims in national conflicts. This initially included Afghanistan and, after Azzam’s 1989 Peshawar-based assassination, also Bosnia and Chechnya.23 Azzam’s jihad doctrine, therefore, was pan-Islamism’s militaristic component whereas international Islamic universities, Islamic charities, and the OIC represented intellectual, financial, and diplomatic components. In Sudan, Bin Laden upgraded Azzam’s jihad doctrine and promoted global jihad, which prioritized fighting the United States and Israel, or “far enemies,” more than national governments allied with the United States, or “near enemies.” When Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, he further legitimized asymmetric mass-casualty attacks against far enemy targets on a “global battlefield.”24 He envisioned attacks against far enemy targets would also inspire Muslims to attack national governments reliant on Western backing. His global jihad doctrine consequently differed from Azzam’s because Azzam, like pan-Islamist institutions, accepted nation-state parameters. Nevertheless, there was sufficient overlap between Bin Laden and pan-Islamist institutions that the latter often supported global jihadists, until 9/11. Bin Laden’s global jihad doctrine resulted in the first al-Qaeda Central– directed attacks targeting the United States and Israel. These included a small-scale and unsuccessful bombing at a hotel in Aden, Yemen, where US soldiers prepared Somalia-based humanitarian missions in 1992; ambushing Mogadishu, Somalia–based US forces during the 1993 “Blackhawk Down” battle; launching simultaneous massive vehicle bombings at the US

Nigerian Jihadists in Sudan and the Sahel

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embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; conducting the boat-borne suicide bombing of the USS Cole naval warship off Aden’s coast in 2000; masterminding the 9/11 attacks in the United States; and firing missiles toward an Israeli passenger jet while concurrently conducting suicide bombings before Hanukkah at an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, in 2002.25 These attacks were mostly in East Africa or near its coast because Bin Laden’s Khartoum-based global jihadists cultivated cells regionally. After 9/11 and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Bin Laden’s global jihad doctrine underwent two adaptations. First, enemies were redefined to include countries supporting US military coalitions, including Nigeria. Second, grassroots jihadists were inspired to fight in Afghanistan, Iraq, or other Western-backed countries perceived to be “occupied” like Somalia or to wage jihad against national governments that were considered US allies or agents, including Nigeria. By the mid-2000s, therefore, far enemy and near enemy distinctions became less clear.26 Moreover, although al-Qaeda was a “sophisticated organization” training Muslim militants pre-9/11, by the time of Boko Haram’s 2002 founding, al-Qaeda was both an organization and a vanguard inspiring the broader global jihadist movement.27 The global jihadist movement’s members, including in Boko Haram, shared al-Qaeda’s mission and Salafi-jihadi ideology but did not necessarily formally join al-Qaeda or pledge loyalty to Bin Laden or Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Umar. Moreover, only al-Qaeda Central regularly operated internationally. Al-Qaeda’s affiliates recognized by Bin Laden or his deputy, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, including Islamic State of Iraq (ISI),28 AQIM, al-Shabaab, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and alQaeda allies, including, among others, Boko Haram in Nigeria, Jemaa Islamiya (Islamic Group) in Indonesia, and Abu Sayyaf (Bearer of the Sword) in the Philippines, operated predominantly in their home regions. Origins of the “Nigerian Taliban” Muhammed Ali, like Khalid al-Barnawi, was a Kanuri and spent his 1980s childhood in Saudi Arabia. However, Ali returned to his native Maiduguri when his father passed away.29 Upon entering the University of Maiduguri in the 1990s, he was among the brightest students and campus leaders.30 He, therefore, was similar to other founding Boko Haram members and alQaeda generally: wealthy, well-traveled, and Western (boko)-educated. Ali embraced jihadism when traveling to Saudi Arabia in 1994 with classmate and fellow Kanuri, Abu Umar, to sell Ali’s father’s properties.31 Either on that same or possibly a separate journey they also traveled to Khartoum for business and studies.32 In Saudi Arabia and Khartoum they were influenced by jihadist literature arguing not only that Western education was un-Islamic, but also that there was an obligation to wage jihad

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against secular governments.33 Ali also met Bin Laden’s deputies, learned fiqh al-jihad (jurisprudence of jihad), and received paramilitary training in Bin Laden–funded Sudan-based camps. One of Ali’s teachers was the Libyan Abu Yahya al-Libi,34 who was in Afghanistan in the late 1980s but traveled to Mauritania and Sudan to continue Islamic studies in the 1990s before returning to Afghanistan.35 Before their travels in Saudi Arabia and Sudan, the prominent Nigerian Salafi preacher Shaikh Jaafar Mahmud Adam (Shaikh Jaafar) delivered his first widely attended Ramadan sermons in Maiduguri. Although Shaikh Jaafar was based in Kano, he traveled to Maiduguri annually during Ramadan beginning in 1993 when he returned to Nigeria after studying for four years at IUM. In Maiduguri, Shaikh Jaafar preached mostly at Ndimi Mosque, but also sometimes at the University of Maiduguri’s mosque.36 Ali’s companion from Zaria, Kaduna State, using the alias Abu Aisha, became Boko Haram’s Bauchi-based religious leader before being arrested around 2013 and released to de-radicalization programs around 2016. He recalls “big men” in Nigeria’s largest Salafi organization, Izala,37 which included Shaikh Jaafar, connecting Ali to Bin Laden’s Khartoum-based deputies.38 Shaikh Jaafar enrolled at Khartoum’s International University of Africa after IUM but discontinued his program, and little is known about his time in Khartoum. Nevertheless, in 1994 the International University of Africa hosted paramilitary trainings; African Muslim students studied there and returned home with “wads of cash” and “missionary zeal” to pursue Islamic revolution based on the teachings of Sudanese politician and Muslim Brotherhood secretary-general Hassan al-Turabi, who became Bin Laden’s brother-in-law and provided Bin Laden haven in Khartoum. Al-Turabi similarly offered sanctuary for militants from Lebanon, Palestine, and throughout Africa, including the GIA, until Western and Saudi pressure forced him to expel Bin Laden in 1996.39 Ali possibly connected with Bin Laden’s deputies through Nigerian Salafi preachers’ Khartoum contacts or, as discussed subsequently, a Nigeria-based GIA middleman. Abu Aisha learned from Ali that in Khartoum, Ali was influenced by the teachings of al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader then based in Khartoum; Jordanian jihadist theologian Abu Muhammed Al-Maqdisi; and Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Abdullah al-Shami.40 Their works conveyed to Ali how “jihad in this contemporary world” could be waged “despite jihad having long history in Nigeria.”41 Another former Boko Haram member reported Ali’s becoming Bin Laden’s “disciple” and Bin Laden’s promising Ali 300 million Nigerian naira ($3 million) for establishing jihadist cells in Nigeria.42 An Ansaru member also reported Ali’s traveling between Sudan and Nigeria starting in 1994, dispensing money to Nigerians, and recruiting Nigerian university students to travel to Sudan for paramilitary training.43

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Nigerian Salafi scholar Isa Ali Pantami further recalled that Ali and Abu Umar dropped their university studies, discussed their beliefs with Islamic scholars, and “imported” teachings of Syrian jihadist scholar Abu Basir alTartusi44 into Nigeria. Pantami, who was approached by Ali, noted Muslims from various organizations accepted Ali’s dawa, but Ali’s followership consolidated only around Maiduguri where Ali maintained influence among university students.45 Before he became Ali’s companion around 1994, Abu Aisha studied wars in Islamic history and, after hearing Ali’s audio sermons, desired to learn about jihad from Ali directly.46 Although Ali never sent Abu Aisha for training abroad, Abu Aisha knew university students were sent to Sudan for this purpose. Most were Kanuris, but one university student, Ibrahim Abdulganiyu, was a Yoruba Muslim who traveled to Sudan for paramilitary training and began sending money from donors to Yoruba Muslims in Nigeria.47 This is one reason why there were southerners in Nigeria’s jihadist community since 1994, even though Maiduguri became the hub. Not all members of Nigeria’s mid-1990s jihadist community later joined Boko Haram, however. For example, Abu Aisha noted that a Yoruba Muslim, Lawal Babafemi, received funding from Abdulganiyu after Babafemi abandoned his university studies in Lagos. Despite not joining Boko Haram, years later, in 2010, Babafemi authored AQAP’s Inspire magazine with American Samir Khan and met in Yemen with, and received money from, AQAP’s American ideologue, Anwar al-Awlaki, to recruit other Nigerians.48 Babafemi was arrested, extradited, and imprisoned in the United States for authoring Inspire and planning “bigger missions” in Nigeria, but prosecutors stated Babafemi never explained why he joined AQAP.49 His roots in Nigeria’s jihadist community might provide answers. Babafemi’s preference for AQAP over Boko Haram also demonstrated how, throughout Nigerian jihadism’s history, southern and central Nigerian jihadists tended to adopt internationalist jihadist orientations and join Ansaru more than Borno-rooted Boko Haram. However, ISWAP eventually reconciled these discrepancies because although its main operational areas were in Borno, it was still the West Africa Province in IS’s global caliphate and, therefore, it ideologically transcended Boko Haram’s Borno-centrism, as discussed in subsequent chapters. Although Babafemi never joined Boko Haram, Ali’s other followers, including Abu Umar and Ibrahim Abdulganiyu, became the “Nigerian Taliban’s” nucleus by 2003. Some followers also trained in the Sahel with the GIA and later GSPC. Abu Aisha claimed Ali never discussed whether he went to Afghanistan, but Nigerian academics, journalists, and officials claim Ali traveled there, “widely across the Middle East,” and possibly to Britain, which became a 1990s “New Peshawar” where Afghan jihad veterans, Bin Laden–funded GIA media activists, and jihadist ideologues,

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including Abu Basir al-Tartusi, were based.50 Abu Aisha also mentioned that eight of Ali’s followers, including Abu Umar, traveled to Afghanistan.51 University of Maiduguri professors similarly recall some Salafi students’ dropping their studies and training in Afghanistan in the years surrounding 9/11, with some returning to Nigeria and one dying there.52 Their route, according to Abu Aisha, involved “slipping into” the Sahel and traveling to Afghanistan. However, they never discussed their trainings abroad because it could attract unwanted attention from Nigeria’s security agencies.53 Funding that Ali brought into Nigeria was also used to support Nigerian Salafi preachers, including preachers involved in sending Ali to Khartoum or those preachers’ disciples. One reported funding recipient was Muhammed Yusuf, who was then a rising star in Shaikh Jaafar’s preaching network in the mid-1990s, which is discussed further in this chapter.54 Once funding streams between Sudan and Nigeria were established, according to Abu Aisha, several Izala scholars “blessed starting the jihad struggle in Nigeria.”55 Ali and Yusuf also co-led Boko Haram after 9/11, and Khalid alBarnawi “directly assisted” Kanama camp members who fled to GSPC camps when Nigerian security forces destroyed the camp in 2003.56 Ali and al-Barnawi’s relationship derived from having mutual connections to Bin Laden’s deputies in Khartoum and coordinating trainings for Nigerians in the Sahel. Their relationship also explains why a 2010 AQIM letter passed to Bin Laden by Attiya revealed that al-Barnawi discussed Ali’s death with Algerian AQIM southern commander and former FIS member, Abu Zeid,57 in August 2009.58 Al-Barnawi knew details about Ali’s death. The name given to Ali’s followers, the “Taliban,” also derived from villagers who saw them wear turbans like the Afghan Taliban, their self-identification with global jihadists, and their being “honored” to represent the Afghan Taliban in Nigeria.59 They also made northern Yobe villages, including Kanama, their bases because those villages were located 200 miles north of Maiduguri and near Niger’s border, which allowed easy escape from Nigeria to the Sahel. Moreover, northern Yobe’s remoteness meant Nigeria’s government would not, at least initially, “make spirited efforts to dislodge them.”60 This suggests Kanama camp was not quite a “substantially pacific community” of “puritanical” Salafis.61 Rather, it reflected the post-9/11 surfacing of Nigeria’s jihadist community that had existed since 1994. Financing African Militants Any Nigerian Salafi preachers connecting Muhammed Ali to Bin Laden’s Khartoum-based deputies or aware of Ali’s travels would have known by the mid-1990s that Bin Laden was an Afghan jihad legend sponsoring Islamic militancy through cooperation with Islamic charities.62 This is probably how Ali’s jihadist project in Nigeria was also funded. Sudan’s government pro-

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vided MWL land in Khartoum where Bin Laden met, among others, Saudi national Wael Julaidan.63 He previously represented MWL in Peshawar and organized Azzam’s Afghan jihad funding network from an Arizona mosque where, among other locations in the United States, Azzam and Tamim alAdnani once lectured.64 According to a 1995 CIA White House briefing, Bin Laden’s Khartoum home became a “Ford Foundation of Sunni Islamic terrorism” where “Islamist radicals would make proposals to Bin Laden for operations, and if Bin Laden approved, he would hand over funds.”65 Thus, forming Nigeria’s first jihadist cells became Ali’s winning proposal. Supporting Ali was consistent with Bin Laden’s reportedly promising several million dollars to Libya-trained Abdurrajak Janjalani, who met Bin Laden in Afghanistan and separated from nationalist-oriented southern Philippines–based Islamist militants to found Abu Sayyaf in the 1990s.66 After his 2006 death, Abdurrajak was later succeeded by his brother, Khaddafy, named after Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Bin Laden fulfilled his promise to fund Abu Sayyaf by channeling funds to his brotherin-law, Jamal Khalifa, who directed the Jedda-based Islamic charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), in the Philippines after leaving MWL’s Peshawar office in 1988.67 Ali’s Khartoum mission also coincided with other sub-Saharan Africans’ meeting Bin Laden in Khartoum, including Italy-based Senegalese preacher Mamour Fall, who wanted to engage in diamond smuggling with alQaeda.68 Another Ugandan convert to Islam, Jamil Mukulu, was influenced by the originally British India–based and mostly apolitical Tablighi Jamaat (Propagation Group), which urges Muslims to practice Islam like in the time of Prophet Muhammad.69 After studying in Saudi Arabia and returning home, Mukulu conflicted with Uganda’s government and Ugandan Islamic scholars and was expelled to Congo, where he led Muslim militants backed by Sudan, whose 1990s geopolitical rival was Uganda because it supported South Sudan’s struggle for secession.70 Like regarding Mamour Fall and Muhammed Ali, there are mostly oral sources about Mukulu’s visiting Khartoum, but he reportedly received money from “al-Qaeda groups” after meeting Bin Laden, which resembles Ali’s encounters in Sudan.71 While Muhammed Ali’s progeny became ISWAP, in 2019 Mukulu’s successors became IS’s Central Africa Province in eastern Congo and northern Mozambique, despite being significantly smaller than ISWAP and despite Mukulu’s being in a Tanzanian prison awaiting International Criminal Court proceedings.72 Similarly, Abdurrajak Janjalani-founded Abu Sayyaf’s successor groups were eventually recognized by IS as its “soldiers” in 2017, albeit not with formal “province” status. One reason why the proposal to form Nigerian jihadist cells interested Bin Laden related to growing post–Cold War US influence not only near Sudan in Somalia but also in West Africa, including the US backing in 1990

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of the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG)’s Liberia-based military intervention involving 10,000 Nigerian troops.73 According to Bin Laden’s Yemeni bodyguard in Khartoum, alQaeda sought to “enlarge its scope” in Africa after learning that Liberian Muslims regretted that no Afghan Arabs defended them from Liberian militant-politician Charles Taylor, who believed Liberian Muslims were loyal to the initially Libya-backed Samuel Doe regime that Taylor deposed in 1990.74 Taylor also received Libyan training and funding to overthrow Doe because Doe betrayed Qaddafi by embracing Israel in 1983 and accusing Qaddafi of sending bribes and ammunition throughout Africa “to lead the whole continent” after Doe came to power through a military coup in 1980.75 AlQaeda’s financing West African jihadists could, therefore, undermine US and Israeli activities in West Africa and defend Muslims in that region like al-Qaeda was attempting to do in Somalia and elsewhere in East Africa. In a 2015 video reclaiming Bin Laden’s legacy from IS rivals, alZawahiri mentioned another reason for Bin Laden’s interest in Nigeria. He claimed Bin Laden hoped to “establish land routes for hajj (pilgrimage in Mecca) extending from Nigeria through Sudan, connecting African Islamic nations at economic, cultural, and personal levels.”76 Nevertheless, Bin Laden’s own actions demonstrated that West Africa’s importance derived primarily from its offering rear bases to supply Algerian jihadists. Two scholars on Islam in Africa have implied an Islamic charity founded in 1986 might have at least indirectly funded the early Boko Haram—alMuntada al-Islami (The Islamic Forum).77 One of its employee’s ties to Izala, the GSPC, and Kanama camp members are discussed in the next chapter. The charity’s founder was Syrian hybrid Wahhabi–Muslim Brotherhood theologian, Muhammad Surur, who lived in exile in Saudi Arabia and then Britain for two decades and finally Qatar before his death in 2016 because he fled Syria’s suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood from the 1980s onward.78 Surur was, however, reviled by jihadists, including London-based GIA media activist and future al-Qaeda strategist Abu Musab al-Suri, because Surur supported FIS Islamist political activism and not the GIA’s jihad, and he called Bin Laden “crazy” (majnun) for declaring jihad against the United States in 1996 and attacking the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.79 Surur’s disciples were also disfavored by Saudi Arabia’s Islamic scholarly establishment for their activism against the Saudi monarchy, especially its alliance with the United States during the Persian Gulf War in 1990–1991, but this is also why Bin Laden admired some of Surur’s Saudi students.80 With headquarters in London, al-Muntada al-Islami was nevertheless privately funded by Saudi businessmen who supported its global dawa activities.81 It also operated primarily in majority Muslim countries, including sixteen in West Africa; established offices in Khartoum and northern Nigeria’s largest city, Kano; and built Islamic centers and assisted imams (prayer lead-

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ers), especially during Ramadan, and published Salafi preachers’ books, including in Nigeria.82 Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who became emir of Kano in 2014, meaning he formally led Nigeria’s Tijaniya Sufi order originally founded in the Maghreb region,83 was among Shaikh Jaafar’s anti-Wahhabi ideological adversaries. He claimed in an article on northern Nigeria’s influential policy debate-oriented website, www.gamji.com, that al-Muntada al-Islami “recruited” Shaikh Jaafar after Shaikh Jaafar’s 1993 return to Kano from IUM.84 Sanusi studied sharia at Khartoum’s International University of Africa when Shaikh Jaafar was enrolled, but did not actually study, there in the mid-1990s. This, in addition to Sanusi’s being from Kano, where Shaikh Jaafar preached, explains his knowledge of Shaikh Jaafar’s relationships. Supporting Sanusi’s claim is al-Muntada al-Islami’s funding of the construction in 2002 of Shaikh Jaafar’s mosque in Dorayi, Kano known as alMuntada Mosque (Masallacin al-Muntada).85 By 2003, when Ali and Yusuf co-led Boko Haram, Sufis alleged alMuntada al-Islami funded Salafi preachers, mosques, schools, and “Izala offshoots” promoting Wahhabism in Nigeria.86 As Boko Haram was then an Izala offshoot, those allegations would be credible if the charity’s funds passed through the charity’s donees, including Izala preachers, such as Shaikh Jaafar, or the charity’s employees and were then transferred to Boko Haram’s Salafi preachers who were close to Izala, like Muhammed Yusuf and Muhammed Ali. Bridging al-Qaeda, Islamic charities, the GSPC, Izala, and Boko Haram in 1994 was Algerian jihadist Hassan (Hacene) Allane. The Algerian Jihad Reaches Nigeria An AQIM Algerian sharia official, Hisham Abu Akram (Hisham), and Mauritanian AQIM commander, Abu Numan Qutayba al-Shinqiti (Abu Numan),87 wrote respective accounts discussing Bin Laden’s support to Algerian jihadists and Algerian jihadists’ history with Nigerian jihadists. Both stated Nigerians first joined the GIA in 1994.88 The timing of Nigerians’ joining the GIA corresponded with Muhammed Ali’s travels to Sudan and his deployment of followers for trainings abroad, and with Hassan Allane’s arrival in Nigeria.89 These events occurring simultaneously were likely not coincidental. Born in 1941, Allane fought in the Afghan jihad when he was older than most mujahidin, earning nicknames such as Shaikh Hassan, Elder Hassan, and Uncle Hassan (Ammi Hassan) before he returned to Algeria and joined FIS. However, after Algeria’s canceled elections he took exile, joined the GIA, and relocated to Niger.90 According to the UN terrorist designation of Allane for alQaeda membership, he became a GSPC Tariq Ibn Ziyad91 brigade member, which later became an AQIM brigade led by Abu Zeid that included Khalid al-

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Barnawi.92 Abu Zeid and Allane were also involved in GSPC’s kidnappings of thirty-two European tourists in Niger and Mali in 2003, most of whom were released for ransoms.93 Before Allane’s death in 2004, GSPC second-incommand, the Algerian Amari Saifi,94 who was also involved in those kidnappings, promoted Allane to lead another GSPC brigade in Niger.95 Allane’s career operating in Niger and Nigeria earned praise from Hisham, who described Allane as one of the nashitin (activists) and “good people” (ahl al-kheir) in the Sahel who had “good relations with the region’s people.” Allane’s contributions, according to Hisham, “bore fruit” in making the Sahel a “rear base for the mujahidin” in Algeria, as Bin Laden envisioned. Hisham further considered Allane “the father, founder, and custodian of all jihadist movements (tahrikat al-mujahidin) since 1994 in the Sahara and to Nigeria.”96 In a 2009 letter Hisham wrote to “the brothers in Afghanistan,” which was found in Bin Laden’s Pakistan compound in 2011, Hisham recalled that after fighting in Afghanistan he lived in Bin Laden’s Khartoum guesthouse in 1993–1994 with the Algerian Saleh Abu Muhammed,97 who later became AQIM’s spokesman, shura member, negotiator, and liaison to al-Qaeda Central, and with one of Bin Laden’s Saudi Afghan jihad veteran bodyguards, Yusuf al-Ayeri, who masterminded, and was killed after, alQaeda’s first attacks in Saudi Arabia in May 2003.98 This indicates Hisham was likely personally aware of Bin Laden’s interactions with Allane when Bin Laden was in Khartoum and Allane was in the Sahel and Nigeria, and that Hisham remained connected to Bin Laden through couriers after the 1990s. Abu Numan also claimed he learned about Algerian jihadists’ history with Nigerian jihadists through “oral sources and reliable witnesses” in AQIM who participated in “exchanges” with Boko Haram and through “correspondences preserved in [his] personal archive.”99 According to Hisham, when Allane fled Algeria and traveled to Niger, he continued his presumably pre-Afghan jihad “longtime merchant” (tajir qadeem) activities between Niger and Algeria and led a Hijaz-based Islamic charity in Niger through which Bin Laden “organized jihadist work” (‘amal jihadi).100 This charity was probably MWL or its local donees because MWL was the only reported Hijaz-based Islamic charity in the mid-1990s in Niger.101 Additionally, the MWL, IIRO, and Riyadh-based World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) regularly employed Afghan jihad veterans doubling as al-Qaeda operatives before 9/11.102 It would not have been atypical if Bin Laden collaborated with Allane during Allane’s Islamic charity employment in Niger to fund rear bases that supplied Algerian jihadists. Hisham further recalled that Bin Laden prioritized West Africa. This suggests why Bin Laden requested his third-in-command, Egyptian Afghan jihad veteran Abu Ubaydah al-Banjshiri, to travel to West Africa in 1993, but alBanjshiri preferred East Africa, where he died in a 1996 ferry accident.103 According to Hisham, Bin Laden still established a “special committee” for

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coordinating between West African and Algerian jihadists, especially weapons trafficking.104 Hisham joined Belmokhtar’s brigade in Niger in 1995 and years later distributed ransom money from kidnappings to AQIM brigades.105 Hisham also wrote that Allane traveled to Khartoum to meet Bin Laden in 1993, but they never connected. Bin Laden, therefore, sent an Algerian and a Libyan to meet Allane, but they were detained at the airport in Niger because Algeria informed Niger about Allane’s presence in the country.106 This prompted Allane’s 1994 relocation across Niger’s border to Katsina, Nigeria. Allane nevertheless remained Belmokhtar’s “close assistant” and supplied weapons for Algerian jihadists on routes from Kano through Niger to Algeria where Belmokhtar’s Malian Arab father-in-law, Oumar Hamaha,107 received and distributed them.108 Belmokhtar also earned the nickname Mister Marlboro for smuggling West African contraband, including Nigeriasourced cigarettes with, among others, Khalid al-Barnawi and eventually young Malian trafficker Sultan Ould Bady, whose fighters’ role in postMarch 2019 ISWAP is discussed in Chapter 10.109 Allane recruited Nigerian Muslims from Katsina and Kano for the GIA, claiming West African governments were “atheistic” and “American puppets.”110 According to Abu Numan, the “recruitment” (iltihaq) of the “Nigerian brothers for jihad in the Sahara is an old matter” and the first “long-lasting relationships” between “mujahidin brothers in Algeria and Nigeria” were established in 1994, and Nigerians were thereafter “martyred on the frontlines in Niger, Mali and Algeria.”111 Those Nigerians presumably operated alongside GIA members like Khalid al-Barnawi and were among Allane’s recruits and Muhammed Ali’s followers. They were certainly members of Nigeria’s emerging jihadist community. Pan-Islamist Partnerships in Nigeria Hassan Allane was hosted in Nigeria by Izala’s Katsina chairman, Yakubu Musa Hassan Katsina (Yakubu Musa).112 Six years Allane’s junior, Musa grew up near Jos, Plateau State, and studied Islam under his Sufi uncle Ibrahim Mushaddadu.113 However, in the 1960s, MWL sponsored Salafi scholars from abroad, such as Pakistan, to travel to Nigeria, including Jos, and teach Wahhabi texts, including, for example, the famous Wahhabi book on monotheism, Fathul Majid (Divine Triumph).114 Musa subsequently became a Salafi and one of Izala’s first members after its 1978 founding in Jos.115 This caused Musa’s uncle to curse him.116 Before 1978, Musa supported the politically oriented Nigerian Islamic organization Jama‘atu Nasril Islam (Society for Support of Islam, JNI), which was founded in 1962 with Saudi and Kuwaiti funding and contributions from Nigerian Islamic scholars, Nigeria’s Ministry of Education, and a Kaduna-based Pakistani merchant.117 JNI’s founder was Usman dan Fodio’s

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descendant and sultan of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, who formally led Nigeria’s Sufi Qadiriya order, which originated in Baghdad. JNI sent Musa to teach at the mosque of Kafanchan, Kaduna State’s emir, who was politically powerful locally even though most Kafanchan villagers were Christians, which generated animosity. Musa later relocated to Katsina after attending Katsina’s Arabic Teachers’ College, whose Higher Islamic school became a “breeding ground” for Salafi scholars.118 In 1987, Kafanchan experienced severe Muslim-Christian clashes when an evangelical group converted researcher Abubakar Bako from northern Nigeria’s prestigious Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) to Christianity. However, a female student claimed Bako blasphemed Prophet Muhammad.119 ABU’s Muslim Students Society (MSS), which was influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran’s Islamic Revolution, and Saudi Arabia and promoted “purifying Islam among students,” responded with protests in Kafanchan.120 This led to clashes involving more than ten deaths and 150 churches, five mosques, and other properties destroyed, especially Christian-owned hotels in Kafanchan and nearby Katsina and Zaria, where ABU’s main campus was located. Musa’s pro-Muslim advocacy during the clashes earned him the nickname Yakubu Musa Kafanchan.121 Considering Musa’s background, there are several reasons why he hosted Allane seven years after the Kafanchan clashes, one being West African Islamic scholars’ widespread sympathy for FIS members “robbed of election victory.”122 Another reason involves Musa’s alienation after Nigeria’s own 1993 presidential election was annulled by Ibrahim Babangida, who was Nigeria’s Muslim military ruler. Babangida, who married a southern Nigerian Christian woman in a church, was suspected of sympathizing with Christians during his rule from 1985 to 1993 and also called the Kafanchan clashes “the first step toward a civilian coup” against his rule.123 A southerner Yoruba Muslim was expected to win the 1993 election that Babangida, like Algeria’s military rulers, then annulled, which Musa considered an injustice.124 This annulling of the election occurred despite Babangida’s claims to support twoparty democracy; he was eventually ousted in a coup later in 1993 that brought another military ruler, Sani Abacha, to power until 1998. Furthermore, Musa desired to establish a Nigerian Islamist political party like Algeria’s FIS.125 This might explain why Musa boycotted southerner Yoruba Christian Olusegun Obasanjo’s 1999–2007 presidency and claimed Obasanjo would have sought a third term but for “Izala’s intervention.”126 Musa was also detained during Obasanjo’s presidency in July 2001 for “harboring foreigners with intent to cause trouble,” presumably including Allane, and possessing GSPC “money and equipment.”127 Although Musa was released when his Muslim followers protested, Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Aminu Wali, described Musa to the UN CounterTerrorism Committee as the former “leader of the GSPC network . . . to

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establish terrorist cells in Katsina and Kano,” the two cities where Allane operated.128 Allane, therefore, may have proposed to Musa that Nigerian youths train with the GIA after Allane’s 1994 arrival in Katsina, with trainees expected to defend Nigerian Muslims in future Kafanchan-like clashes. If so, this would resemble what various Salafi scholars in Niger have recalled regarding GIA members’ arriving in Niger, and helps explain why Salafis in Niger were called “new jihadists” in 1993, despite their rebuffing offers of military support from GIA members.129 The lack of Muslim-Christian tensions in Niger, which has a 98 percent Muslim population, may have limited the perceived need for Muslim self-defense. Musa and Allane were also mutually connected to Islamic charities. Musa, for example, received a 1991 Saudi delegation to Katsina, after which the MWL and OIC funded Musa’s Izala-affiliated, Katsina-based school, Riyadhul Qur’an (Garden of the Qur’an), with students from Nigeria and Niger, Togo, Cameroon, Ghana, and Mali.130 Founded in 1984, the school, which included an Islamic traditional curriculum and later adopted Western and Arab educational models, was originally at Musa’s home, but it expanded after Nigeria’s most prominent Salafi and Ahmadu Bello’s imam and Arabic translator, Abubakar Gumi, helped Musa access Saudi funds in 1989.131 This explains why Musa received the Saudi delegation and Gumi keynoted the 1991 ceremony inaugurating the school’s new campus.132 Musa later became one of Nigeria’s “closest people” to MWL’s leadership in Mecca and was among the select dignitaries around the world allowed by Saudi authorities to enter the sacred Kaaba (Black Stone) in Mecca.133 Therefore, Allane and Musa’s relationships with similar Islamic charities in Nigeria and Niger meant, like other pan-Islamists, they were duty-bound to help one another. There were also close relationships between Niger’s Izala leader, Chaibou Ladan, and Nigerian Izala leaders. Ladan studied in the 1990s under Katsina-based Salafi scholars and Kaduna-based Abubakar Gumi before returning to Niger.134 When Gumi received Saudi Arabia’s 1987 King Faisal Prize for Service to Islam in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he described himself as Ahmadu Bello’s “follower” despite having supported Izala’s 1978 founding after Bello’s death, to extricate Salafis from JNI’s Sufi-leaning orientation.135 Building on Bello’s legacy, Gumi called for MWL to fund Nigerian Muslims to “assist neighboring countries.”136 Consequently, Saudi funding supported not only Musa’s Katsina school’s expansion at a new campus but also its partnership with another school, founded in 1989, across Katsina’s border in Maradi, Niger, called Moufidah.137 Organized by Chaibou Ladan, Moufidah followed Musa’s school’s model, revived a preexisting school “constructed by a wealthy Algerian merchant,” received funding from a Maradi-based Izala donor who received “substantial quantities” of funds from Nigeria and Arab countries, and employed instructors who were trained locally and abroad, including at Sudanese universities.138

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Besides Ladan, Niger’s other Salafi preachers also commonly studied under Nigerian scholars, including Gumi, before returning to Niger and becoming Salafi scholars.139 Allane, therefore, did not simply show up at Musa’s doorstep. Rather, Allane’s refuge with Musa in 1994 was presumably facilitated by mutual Islamic charity and Salafi contacts in Niger and Nigeria. Interpreting Jihad in Nigeria In 1994 Yakubu Musa was among the three most outspoken members of Ahlussunnah, a Shaikh Jaafar–led Salafi preaching network, which eventually welcomed the young, promising preacher, Muhammed Yusuf.140 Discussed further in Chapter 4, Ahlussunnah was an Izala subgroup, and its name generically means “followers of sunna” (traditional Islamic law). After Kafanchan and another major 1992 Muslim-Christian clash in Zango-Kataf, Kaduna State, Musa and fellow Ahlussunnah scholars might have envisioned Allane’s experience, if not also Muhammed Ali’s relationships with jihadists in Sudan, as helpful for Nigerian Muslims to defend themselves during clashes with Christians. Defending Muslims was the hallmark of Ahlussunnah’s third mostoutspoken cleric, Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, the other two being Musa and Shaikh Jaafar.141 Datti Ahmed became well-known for provocative statements, claiming, for example, that Muslims “won’t rest until we deal with the offending agent,” after young female journalist Isioma Daniel wrote a 2002 ThisDay article suggesting that Prophet Muhammad would marry beauty pageant contestants and asserting if “Algeria, an Islamic country,” contributed contestants, then Nigerian Muslims should not oppose Abuja’s hosting Miss World.142 Subsequently, Datti Ahmed claimed Daniel’s article was “total war against Islam” and blamed ThisDay “for being targeted by mobs” after its Kaduna office was burned down in protests where dozens of people were killed.143 The pageant was forced to relocate to London, ThisDay apologized, and Daniel found refuge in Benin and then Norway after Zamfara’s deputy governor declared that her “blood can be shed like Salman Rushdie.”144 Datti Ahmed founded the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria (SCSN) in 2000, whose Katsina, Kano, and Borno representatives were, respectively, Yakubu Musa, Shaikh Jaafar, and Muhammed Yusuf.145 SCSN pressured state governors to implement sharia when Nigeria’s twelve northern states adopted sharia from 1999 to 2001.146 It also fulfilled Datti Ahmed’s and Musa’s Islamist political goals, although it was not a political party. Datti Ahmed was a medical doctor but became involved in local politics in Fagge, Kano, in 1969.147 Being among the “rising stars” of the “intellectual core of young northerners,” he joined other northerners who were drafting Nigeria’s 1979 Constitution, but they failed to secure a sufficient role for sharia in it because of southerner Christians’ opposition.148 In 1978,

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the CIA, whose sources included JNI’s treasurer and diplomats receiving Datti Ahmed’s help to rent houses, described Datti Ahmed as one of two “Libyan connections” because he liaised with Libya’s Kano-born ambassador to Nigeria, who sought to “buy” Nigerian politicians’ loyalty to Muammar Qaddafi.149 This was the same strategy Qaddafi also employed with, among others, Liberia’s Samuel Doe at that time. The CIA also reported Datti Ahmed’s “abrasiveness,” his support for “the military solution” to end southern African white minority rule, and his pro-Libyan views. Furthermore, Libya preferred Datti Ahmed “as a possible northern presidential candidate,” and Qaddafi promised to spend “millions, billions . . . to make Nigeria a Muslim nation” and provide weapons to Nigerian Muslims during Muslim-Christian clashes.150 Datti Ahmed’s political support base comprised “recent graduates” for whom there was “growing sentiment for Muslim unity and power.”151 US officials found Shehu Shagari, the presidential candidate of Datti Ahmed’s party who won the 1979 presidential election, never accepted Libyan funds and remained Western-aligned. However, they considered it “curious” that Datti Ahmed unsuccessfully tried winning the party nomination himself.152 Datti Ahmed subsequently failed in other attempts to become a presidential candidate. Datti Ahmed’s sharia advocacy enabled him to acquire political power through religious causes. His agitating to replace “a few years of British common law” with “centuries of sharia” was also related to his support for other struggles to eliminate British colonialism’s African legacy.153 His SCSN deputy, Nafiu Baba-Ahmed, a 1978 ABU graduate with Libyan inlaws and a prominent Mauritanian father who emigrated to Zaria, Kaduna State, also recalled Nigerian Muslims’ advocating jihad after the 1987 Kafanchan and 1992 Zango-Kataf clashes. They believed jihad was necessary to “defend Muslims” because Nigeria’s Muslim rulers, especially Ibrahim Babangida, remained aloof to appear “unpartisan.”154 However, SCSN leaders’ political interests and recognition of the legitimacy of Nigeria’s government conflicted with their desire to usurp state authority and actually support Muslim self-defense militias; Boko Haram, and especially Ansaru, would later attempt to fill that void by providing Muslim selfdefense, discussed in Chapter 8. In contrast to Datti Ahmed and Nafiu Baba-Ahmed, foreign-educated Ahlussunnah preachers, including Shaikh Jaafar, were more exposed to global jihad interpretations at international Islamic universities. It was during Shaikh Jaafar’s IUM studies, for example, that Saudi Arabia chose the “infidel” United States instead of Bin Laden’s mujahidin to expel Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army from Kuwait, which spurred Bin Laden to adopt his global jihad doctrine and the Saudis to permanently expel him from Saudi Arabia. A thirty-one-year-old Nigerian ABU graduate on hajj in Mecca in 1991 recorded in his travel notes how “Saddam Hussein start[ed] mouthing Islamic

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slogans” and Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd “rushed to Mr. Bush crying for help” to join the US-led “evil coalition.”155 Shaikh Jaafar and IUM graduates, therefore, inevitably learned Islamists’ critiques of US and Saudi foreign policy and Bin Laden’s jihad justifications while in Medina and in ensuing years. Although Shaikh Jaafar was already a “fire-brand Izala young scholar” by the time of his 1989 departure to study at IUM and maintained ties of loyalty to Saudi Arabia throughout his life, after Shaikh Jaafar’s 1993 return to Nigeria, according to Abu Aisha and other young Nigerians who heard his “aggressive” sermons, he “planted the seed of jihad” in the minds of some of Muhammed Ali’s followers.156 It was also in this context that Muhammed Yusuf became one of Shaikh Jaafar’s Ahlussunnah protégés. Hassan Allane would have espoused Bin Laden’s global jihad doctrine, but that would not have conflicted with supporting Nigerian Salafis’ localized struggles to defend Muslims. Allane also would have maintained communication lines to Bin Laden’s Khartoum-based deputies from his bases in Kano and Katsina after Allane’s own Khartoum mission in 1993 and his continued communications to Sahel-based jihadists, like Belmokhtar and Hisham, who also had contacts to Khartoum-based jihadists. Allane, therefore, could have connected Nigerian Salafi preachers to Bin Laden’s Khartoum-based deputies so Muhammed Ali and Abu Umar could meet those deputies based on mutual interests in global jihad and defending Muslims in Nigeria. Whether Ali and Abu Umar met Bin Laden’s deputies through Nigerian Salafi preachers’ independent contacts or Allane’s recommendation is uncertain. However, they all contributed to the Nigerian jihadist community’s emergence. Nevertheless, considering Allane’s history with Yakubu Musa and, as discussed subsequently, Muhammed Yusuf’s theology being “corrupted” before he met Shaikh Jaafar and became a Salafi, it was possibly not Salafism as much as pan-Islamism that first exposed Nigeria to the “carcinogenic radiations” of global jihadism from which the Boko Haram phenomenon took root.157 Nigeria, whose “immune system” was already weak from “systemic and structural problems,” including persistent Muslim-Christian clashes, proved unable to “slice off the tumor” of global jihadism before it eventually metastasized under Abubakar Shekau’s leadership two decades after Hassan Allane’s arrival to Nigeria and Muhammed Ali’s travel to Sudan.158 In this regard, Hegghammer’s finding that pan-Islamism was more of the “driving ideological paradigm” and “mobilizing power” for global jihadism than Wahhabism applies not only to the Arab world, but also to the Muslim world’s peripheries, including northern Nigeria.159 Nigerian Diaspora Jihadists In the decade after Hassan Allane’s arrival in Nigeria in 1994, he reportedly sent sixty Nigerian Muslims to Mali for training in GIA and GSPC camps.

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Concurrently, Allane rallied diaspora Nigerian jihadists who returned home.160 Most lived in Saudi Arabia, including at least one reportedly expelled for terrorist activities.161 Another, Rabiu Afghani, reportedly “sojourned” with the Afghan Taliban and later joined Kano’s sharia committee when Shaikh Jaafar headed Kano’s hisba (Islamic morality enforcement) board.162 Another reportedly fought in Eritrea or for Sudan-based Eritrean Islamic Jihad.163 The several dozen members in Nigeria’s post-1994 jihadist community, including diaspora returnees, were few enough that Muhammed Ali must have known and cooperated with both Khalid al-Barnawi and Allane. Ali and Allane, for example, both supported Nigerian jihadists’ trainings in the Sahel and maintained ties to Sudan-based al-Qaeda members and Nigerian Ahlussunnah scholars, including Shaikh Jaafar for Ali and Yakubu Musa for Allane. Additionally, they both knew Nigerian diaspora jihadist returnee Yusuf Ahmed (alias Abu Dujana), who lived in Saudi Arabia but resettled in northern Nigeria after 9/11. In 2004, Yusuf Ahmed was reported to be the “overall leader of the [Nigerian] Taliban” and its “mastermind” and link to the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda through contacts forged in Saudi Arabia.164 Ali and Yusuf Ahmed also received funds in Nigeria whose sources were “known only to the duo.”165 Connecting the dots, Yusuf Ahmed could have coordinated travel for Ali’s followers, including Abu Umar, to the Sahel and Afghanistan and transferred funds from al-Qaeda sources to Muhammed Ali. Yusuf Ahmed coordinated Nigerian jihadists’ retreat to the Sahel after Kanama camp’s December 2003 destruction with Muhammed Yusuf’s follower, Muhammed Ashafa, and another al-Qaeda member from Niger’s diaspora in Saudi Arabia, Ibrahim Harun.166 As discussed in Chapter 3, Harun was deployed by al-Qaeda Central commanders from Pakistan to Nigeria in August 2003. Before Kanama camp’s destruction, Yusuf Ahmed, Ibrahim Harun, and Ashafa also planned trainings for Boko Haram members with the GSPC and Ashafa’s subsequent courier work between the Sahel-based GSPC, Nigeriabased Harun, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda.167 Two of Allane’s own recruits for GSPC trainings were reportedly Mudashiru and Mohammed Adam, while others sent through Maradi to Agawane, Tahoua Region, Niger, for GSPC trainings were recruited by Ashafa, reportedly starting on December 30, 2003, when Kanama camp’s destruction was under way.168 GSPC trainings also involved Allane’s son, Ali, who trafficked arms with GSPC second-in-command Amari Saifi and received Nigerian trainees in Agawane before marching them across Niger’s border to GSPC camps in Mali.169 After Mudashiru and Mohammed Adam were arrested, Libya-trained Niger Delta militant-politician and convert to Islam Mujahid Dokubo-Asari claimed during his 2007 court trial that he was imprisoned with Ashafa and that Mudashiru and Mohammed Adam were “repatriated from Libya”170 and suffered in “underground cells in perpetual chains.”171 Abu Aisha also recalled Ashafa was “part of the struggle from the beginning” and that he

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traveled to Pakistan. However, he noted prison abuse prevented Ashafa’s continued participation in the jihad even though Ashafa still advised Muhammed Yusuf.172 Mudashiru, in contrast, actively participated in Boko Haram after his prison release.173 Yusuf Ahmed was also close to Hassan Allane, and after Kanama camp’s destruction they fled together to meet Allane’s son in Niger. However, according to Hisham, Allane and Yusuf Ahmed were killed by Niger’s “collaborationist” security forces in April 2004 after they “brought the Nigerian brothers” to the Sahel.174 Contemporaneous accounts described clashes that led to the deaths of Allane, Yusuf Ahmed, Allane’s son, and another Nigerian and one GSPC member’s arrest as Niger’s army “kill[ed] some traffickers working with GSPC . . . by the Malian border.”175 Niger also considered Allane to be a GSPC “logistician” and his son, Yusuf Ahmed, and the other Nigerian who was killed near the Malian border to all be “GSPC elements.”176 Yusuf Ahmed’s support to the GSPC and Nigerian jihadists also explains why Hisham described Allane as the “father of all jihadist movements . . . from the Sahara and to Nigeria” and “beloved brother Yusuf [Ahmed]” as the “emir [commander]” of the “Nigerian brothers.”177 From the GSPC’s perspective, Yusuf Ahmed may have been the Nigerian jihadists’ “emir” because he had closer ties than Muhammed Ali to the GSPC, especially its highest ranking member in Nigeria, Allane. It was, for example, Allane and Yusuf Ahmed who helped connect and intermediate between Muhammed Ali and his followers and the GSPC’s and al-Qaeda’s training and funding networks. Muhammed Ali’s and Yusuf Ahmed’s activities also demonstrate that Nigeria’s emerging jihadist community from 1994 to 2004 maintained regional and international ties and was not provincially limited to Maiduguri and northern Yobe villages where they were physically based. Theorizing Salafi-Jihadi and GSPC Expansion to Nigeria To recapitulate, the emerging Nigerian jihadist community from 1994 to 2004 comprised Algerian and Nigerian GIA and GSPC members and trainees, including Hassan Allane, Allane’s recruits, Yusuf Ahmed, and Khalid al-Barnawi; Nigerians training with al-Qaeda, the GIA, GSPC, and Sudan-based militants, including Muhammed Ali, Abu Umar, Ibrahim Abdulganiyu, and their recruits; and Nigerian Salafi preachers, eventually including Muhammed Yusuf, and Yusuf’s followers. However, because Izala became known after Shaikh Jaafar’s post-9/11 break with Muhammed Yusuf as “formidable opposition” against Boko Haram, Nigerian Salafi preachers’ contributions to this jihadist community’s mid-1990s emergence have been underexamined.178 Shaikh Jaafar is further remembered for opposing Boko Haram before his 2007 assassination by the late Muhammed Ali’s followers, discussed in Chapter 6. This, and the low

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availability of audio recordings of Shaikh Jaafar’s mid-1990s sermons, may limit critique of his preaching’s contributions to “planting the seed” for Nigeria’s mid-1990s jihadist community’s and Yusuf’s theology. Furthermore, Salafi preachers and SCSN commonly attribute Boko Haram’s ideological genesis to Muhammed Yusuf’s Shia exposure and “impure creed” before meeting Shaikh Jaafar.179 As discussed subsequently, although such claims may deflect from Salafis’ contributions to the Nigerian jihadist community’s emergence, they are not necessarily inaccurate. Lastly, the clandestineness and insularity of Nigeria’s early jihadist community meant besides the unique case of Abu Aisha, who spoke on camera with his face blurred and avoided discussing his own actions, extremely few of the late Ali’s companions are alive, not imprisoned, accessible, “deradicalized,” and amenable to interviews. Those like Abu Aisha who are amenable to interviews, however, are often uncomfortable naming names because, as Abu Aisha noted, most of the Salafi preachers who supported Nigeria’s emerging jihadist community in the 1990s are still alive.180 Similarly, contributions of the GIA, GSPC, diaspora Nigerians, and even AQIM to Nigerian jihadism and cooperation between Boko Haram and Sahel-based jihadists have sometimes been explicitly denied in the literature.181 Although AQIM claimed that “some” commanders arrived in Nigeria from 1994 to 2000 “searching for weapons” and “beginning to establish substantial relations” with “inhabitants and [Islamic] activists,” even if Allane was hypothetically the only Algerian in Nigeria from 1994 to 2004, he still could have made influential contributions as the “father of jihadism” in Nigeria, which Hisham and Sokoto’s top-ranking intelligence officer, Tijjani Kafa, claimed.182 For example, Allane could have recruited Nigerians for GSPC trainings, facilitated Ali’s Khartoum missions, and assisted Nigerian jihadists’ retreat to GSPC camps after Kanama camp’s destruction. His role in helping Boko Haram access financing from alQaeda sources after 9/11 is also examined in the next chapter. In comparison, Abdullah Azzam was the only Arab initially recruiting other Arabs to the Afghan jihad, and he only learned about events in Afghanistan after meeting a Muslim Brotherhood member in Saudi Arabia in 1981 who previously visited Islamic charities in Pakistan. Azzam then received an MWL-funded professorship at Islamabad’s International Islamic University and established his recruitment and logistics network for the Afghan jihad with funding from, among others, Bin Laden. If not for this one person, Azzam, some Arabs would have fought in Afghanistan in the mid1980s, but the “foreign fighter phenomenon would likely not have taken on the proportions it did” with hundreds of “Arab-Afghans” fighting, dispersing internationally, and constituting al-Qaeda’s nucleus in subsequent decades.183 Similar cases could be made for Allane and Ali’s impact on the emergence of Nigeria’s jihadist community in 1994 and Kanama camp’s formation

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less than one decade later, especially if Allane provided contacts to Bin Laden’s Khartoum-based deputies for Ali. Without Nigerians exposed to global jihad comprising the “Nigerian Taliban’s” nucleus and experienced jihadists’ becoming active in Nigeria before 9/11, Boko Haram would not have evolved under solely Nigeria born and bred Muhammed Yusuf’s or any other Salafi preacher’s leadership into the global jihadist movement it became from 2004 to 2010. Small-scale al-Qaeda cells may have established bases in Nigeria like Ibrahim Harun’s cell and later Ansaru’s cells did. However, similar to the foreign fighter phenomenon, Boko Haram “would likely not have taken on the proportions it did” without Allane’s and Ali’s contributions and the latter’s influence on Yusuf and other Kanama camp members. Like Azzam’s personally knowing and inspiring virtually all of the several thousand Arabs who fought in Afghanistan, Ali would also have personally known or met virtually all of the approximately one hundred members at Kanama camp.184 Therefore, despite that Ali and Yusuf eventually clashed by 2003 over when was the appropriate time to wage jihad, as discussed in Chapter 5, Allane’s and Ali’s introduction of jihadist thought and a network of jihadist contacts were still major contributions to Nigerian jihadism. Furthermore, besides Allane, there were other GSPC commanders who engaged Boko Haram, including Amari Saifi, who reportedly “proposed an alliance” in early 2004 with “Nigerian brothers” after they “attacked a military post.”185 Because Allane and his son operated with Saifi, they could have informed him about Kanama camp members’ retreat to the Sahel after the camp’s destruction. However, Saifi was diverted in northern Niger, relocated to Chad, and clashed with Chadian soldiers, leading to the deaths of his fighters from Algeria, Nigeria, Niger, and Mali.186 Chadian rebels finally captured Saifi in March 2004 alongside his remaining fighters. Five were Nigerians, including three from Maiduguri, and others held sim cards for sending coded messages to other jihadist groups.187 Saifi was then handed over to Algerian authorities and imprisoned. According to one European country’s estimate, there were thirty-seven “Nigerian Taliban” members in GSPC camps in Algeria and Mali in 2005.188 Algerian jihadists’ support after Kanama camp’s destruction was also referenced in a January 2017 article in al-Qaeda’s English-language magazine, al-Risalah (The Message), written by Ansaru’s leader, who was reportedly Muhammed Yusuf’s former student.189 However, this student adopted the alias Abu Usama al-Ansari from the Ansaru leader preceding him, Muhammed Auwaul Ibrahim Gombe, who was assassinated by Boko Haram in 2013.190 Al-Risalah was edited by European jihadists in Syria and competed with IS’s English-language magazines and exposed the dangers of excessive takfir, including by interviewing AQIM’s Hisham Abu Akram about the negative impact of the GIA’s and IS’s ideologies.191 Al-Ansari’s own article detailed the negative impact of Shekau’s excessive takfir, but also mentioned al-Ansari’s witnessing Yusuf’s leadership succession of Muham-

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med Ali with his “own eyes” and how after Ali’s death, Ali’s followers “migrated to join the Algerian brothers in the desert” while others “retreated and dispersed” throughout Nigerian cities.192 Kanama camp members’ retreat to GSPC camps could only occur because Ali and Yusuf Ahmed coordinated with GSPC commanders, including Allane, before 2004. According to Hisham, the GSPC’s entrenchment in the Sahel and eventual expansion to northern Nigeria was not Algerian jihadists’ original goal when first entering the Sahel in 1993. Indeed, Allane never intended to operate in Nigeria until his banishment from Algeria and Niger. Rather, Hisham noted the GSPC intended only “to make [the Sahel] a back base to support jihad in Algeria.”193 Nevertheless, Hisham observed the Sahel became a “battleground for jihad” not only because “religiosity spread among the people,” but also the “jihadi ideology moved to the people of the Saharan areas” and Algeria through dawa by, among others, Afghan jihad veterans, Salafis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Tablighi Jamaat.194 They all challenged Sufis who Hisham asserted “dominated” the region, even though differences between these various dawa groups arose after Algeria’s rulers annulled the 1991 elections. After 1991, Hisham and others following the “Jihadi current” founded the GIA and later GSPC and AQIM while other Islamists eventually accepted Algerian government amnesties and ceased fighting.195 Ironically, in 2019, more than two and a half decades years after the GIA’s founding, Algeria declared itself free from terrorism for the first time since 1992 while, in contrast, the “back bases” in the Sahel and northeastern Nigeria were among the world’s most active theaters for jihadist groups.196 Hisham’s “balanced” account also reflected how, after decolonization in West Africa in the 1960s, Sufi scholars accepted the political realities of their newly independent nations and “participated in public political discourse along pluralistic, nationalist lines . . . to minimize confrontation” as long as they could “preserve their institutions and knowledge practices needed for the transmission of Muslim identity.”197 In contrast, newly emerging Salafi movements in postcolonial West Africa, and their members like Hassan Allane, usually depicted governments as “un-religious” and “some actually went beyond criticism to reject the postcolonial secular state and replace it with a Sharia state” whose “moral and political order” could include a “jihadi regime.”198 Salafi movements were therefore more compatible with jihadist groups, including the GIA, GSPC and Boko Haram, than centuries-old West African Sufi orders. Moreover, Salafism’s emphasis on anti-Sufism and theological purity resulted in jihadists’ consistently accusing broad-based Islamist groups following the Muslim Brotherhood’s model of compromising theology and excessively diluting ideology. In Algeria, Nigeria, and West Africa generally, as in other regions of the world, secular and nondenominational postcolonial political authorities also struggled to manage “mutual suspicions” of, and democratic transitions with, Islamist political forces like Algeria’s FIS or Nigeria’s SCSN, especially with

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the end of the Cold War resulting in growing emphasis on obtaining political legitimacy through electoral democracy.199 When FIS’s election victory was annulled, it contributed to “Islamist and Salafi rage,” the GIA’s founding, and the reinforcement of Salafi-jihadi opposition to secularism and democracy.200 Similarly, the incompatibility of SCSN’s demands for full sharia with northern Nigeria’s nondenominational and democratic political and legal systems also contributed to Boko Haram’s founding. Another result of the dawa from Salafi and Islamist movements, including Izala, and international Islamic charities, including the MWL, was when FIS and GIA members first arrived in the Sahel and northern Nigeria in the 1990s, they found like-minded preachers, such as Chaibou Ladan and Yakubu Musa, already exposed to pan-Islamism to welcome them. GIA and later GSPC members also employed new technologies like the Global Positioning System (GPS) to navigate the desert, hide weapons and hostages, and coordinate more effectively than ever before.201 The Internet and growing international reach of Qatar-based Al Jazeera, which especially covered Middle Eastern and Islamic affairs, including Bin Laden’s statements and al-Qaeda “scoops,” also connected West African Muslims more directly to the umma.202 As early as the mid-1990s, observers of Nigerian media noticed how local conflicts were given “particular spins” to relate them to “world conflict between the West and Muslim countries like Iran and Iraq.”203 However, after 9/11, and as a result of pan-Islamism’s influence in Nigeria, the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were felt especially close to home and compelled some West African Salafis to take action, including those in Boko Haram. Concurrently, threefold increases in populations of Sahelian cities from the mid-1980s to mid-2000s, including Katsina, Maiduguri, and Kano, whose populations in 2006 reached over 300,000, 500,000, and 3 million, respectively, created transient populations on city outskirts that had previously never existed.204 The lack of traditional community policing in these city outskirts, in turn, made populations susceptible to recruitment by jihadists and traffickers, including Belmokhtar in the Sahel and Allane in northern Nigeria, or by gangs, cultish, fringe, and revolutionary religious movements or political vigilante groups and Izala’s hisba.205 Meanwhile, the lack of jobs and formal schooling for youths on city outskirts in northern Nigeria often meant they became almajiri (itinerant) students and lacked parental support or supervision.206 Allane, for example, was reportedly “amazed by the sheer number of youngsters under the guardianship of Yakubu Musa,” and some of Musa’s students were “sponsored” to partake in trainings in the Sahel.207 GSPC and Boko Haram leaders, therefore, tapped into university students, Islamic students, and other youths on city outskirts for local recruitment while concurrently maintaining regional and international communications with the GSPC and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda. This, indeed, is how after 9/11 Yusuf Ahmed and Muhammed Ashafa received al-Qaeda member Ibrahim Harun on his Nigeria mission, and Allane welcomed Bin Laden’s

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envoy on his Sahel mission. These two missions coincided with a landmark event in Nigerian jihadism’s history: Kanama camp’s formation. Notes

1. Also known as Abu Abdurrahman Muhammed Ali al-Barnawi. See al-Ansari, “Message from Nigeria,” 19. 2. Matusevich, No Easy Row, 154–155. 3. J. Ibrahim, “Politics of Religion,” 71. 4. Sounaye, “Heirs,” 427–428, 435, 440–443. 5. Azzam, Lofty Mountain, 40. 6. Berger, Jihad Joe, 8–9. 7. Alias: Abu Hafs al-Masri. 8. Nasrullah discussion. 9. Nasrullah discussion; Aisha interview, 2017. 10. Real name: Jamal Ibrahim Ishtaiwi al-Misrati. Aliases: Attiya Abd al-Rahman and Mahmoud. 11. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 9; Hisham, “Scattering of Jewels,” 3–5. 12. Droukdel, “Statement and Greetings”; al-Zawahiri, “Interview,” part 5, 5:24. 13. Tlemcani, “Mokhtar Belmokhtar.” 14. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 6. 15. Tlemcani, “Mokhtar Belmokhtar”; Hisham, “Exclusive Interview,” 2; Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 8; Aisha interview, 2019. 16. ANI, “Mort des deux otages”; Maghlah interview. 17. In 2011, OIC changed its name to Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. 18. Originally founded as the African Islamic Center in 1978. 19. Kepel, Jihad, 181. 20. A name derived from Saudi theologian Muhammed Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. 21. Thurston, “Islamic Universities.” 22. Hegghammer, “Rise of Muslim Foreign Fighters,” 88. 23. Ibid. 24. Hegghammer, “Global Jihadism,” 13. 25. On al-Qaeda’s Tunisia synagogue attack, see Lahoud, “Beware of Imitators,” 74–75. 26. Hegghammer, “Ideological Hybridization.” 27. Hegghammer, “Global Jihadism,” 14. 28. ISI succeeded two Abu Musab al-Zarqawi-led groups known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad and Mujahideen Shura Council) from 1999 to 2006 and preceded 2013-formed ISIS and 2014-formed IS. Abubakar al-Baghdadi became the ISIS leader in 2010 when his predecessor, Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, was killed. 29. Dibal discussion; Z. Mustapha interview. 30. Dibal discussion; Z. Mustapha interview. 31. Pantami interview. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Real name: Hassan Qaid; killed in US airstrikes in Pakistan in 2012. 35. Aisha interview, 2019. 36. S. M. discussion. 37. Known formally as Jamaat Izalatul Bida wa Iqamatus Sunnah (Society Committed to the Removal of Innovation and the Establishment of Sunnah), or by the acronym JIBWIS. 38. Aisha interview, 2018. 39. Nugent, “March,” 82. 40. Abdullah al-Shami was killed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza in 2004. Aisha interview, 2019. 41. Ibid. 42. ICG, “Curbing Violence,” 23. 43. Ibid.; Aisha interview, 2019. 44. Real name: Abdul Man’am Mustafa Halima. 45. Pantami, “Theology and Jurisprudence,” 4; K. Mohammed, “Origins,” 589. 46. Aisha interview, 2019.

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47. Ibid. 48. Clifford, “22-Year Term.” 49. Ibid.; US Department of Justice, “Terrorist Sentenced.” 50. Salkida, Twitter, April 9, 2014; K. Mohammed, “Message and Methods,” 10; S. M. discussion; al-Suri, “Testimony,” 23. 51. Aisha interview, 2019. 52. Brigaglia, “Volatility,” 195. 53. Aisha interview, 2019. 54. ICG, “Curbing Violence,” 23. 55. Aisha interview, 2018. 56. Nasrullah interview. 57. Real name: Mohammad Ghadir. For his biography, see Meddi, “Abu Zeid.” 58. Zeid, letter; France24, “AQIM Confirms Zeid.” 59. Aisha interview, 2017. 60. Opakunle discussion; Borzello, “Tracking Down.” 61. Brigaglia, “Volatility,” 194. 62. Ottaway and Morgan, “Two Muslim Charities.” 63. Bergen, Osama, 129. 64. Azzam, Lofty Mountain, 53. 65. Coll, Ghost Wars, 271. 66. Torres, “Looking for Al-Qaeda.” 67. Arquiza, “Interpol Alerts RP.” 68. BBC, “Italy ‘Racist.’” 69. Congo Research Group, “Inside the ADF,” 5. 70. Ibid. 71. Titeca and Vlassenroot, “Rebels Without Borders,” 167. 72. IS, “Eight Congolese.” 73. Maier, “Air Raids.” 74. Al-Hamadi, “Al-Qaeda.” 75. Shipler, “Liberian Attacks.” 76. Al-Zawahiri, “Islamic Spring.” 77. Kane, Beyond Timbuktu, 186; Brigaglia, “Ja’far Mahmoud Adam,” 36, 39–42. 78. Al-Suri, “Testimony,” 23; Al-Rasheed, Muted Modernists, 168. 79. Al-Suri, “Testimony,” 30–32, 57–59. 80. Al-Rasheed, Muted Modernists, 77; Bergen, The Osama Bin Laden I Know, 165. 81. Agence France-Presse, “Head of Islamic Charity.” 82. Dumbe, Islamic Revivalism, 77–79; Thurston, Salafism, 105. 83. Arabic term referring to northwestern Africa. 84. Sanusi, “Identity.” 85. Thurston, “How Far.” 86. Gwarzo, “Activities,” 310–311. 87. For Abu Numan images, see AQIM, “Freeing Seven Prisoners”; Al-Huda, Issue 1. 88. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 7; AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 6. 89. Ouazani, “Sale temps.” 90. Ahmed, “Homegrown Terrorism,” 5. 91. The eighth century Berber Umayyad commander who led the Muslim conquest of Spain. 92. United Nations Security Council, “Security Council Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee.” 93. Bettache, “Negotiations”; US Department of the Treasury, “Terrorist Kidnappers.” 94. Also known as Abdurrazak al-Para. 95. Callimachi, “Anatomy”; Ouazani, “Sale temps.” 96. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 7. 97. Real name: Saleh Gasmi; arrested in Algeria in 2012. For Gasmi’s image, see Saleh, “Eulogy.” 98. AP, “Al-Qaida Papers: A Disciplinary Letter,” 20; US Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Targets Al Qaida-Affiliated Terror Group”; Hisham, “Exclusive Interview,” 2; Hisham, “Dear Brother,” 10–11. 99. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 1. 100. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 6–7. 101. Sounaye, “Doing Development,” 4.

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102. Watts, Shapiro, and Brown, “Al-Qa’ida’s (Mis)Adventures,” 42; Romero, “US Freezes Funds”; Hedges, “Muslims from Afar.” 103. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 8. 104. Ibid., 7. 105. Hisham, “Exclusive Interview,” 2; Pasqualini, “Approfondimenti.” 106. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 7; Ahmed, “Homegrown Terrorism,” 5. 107. Also known as Barbu Rouge (“Red Beard”). 108. Bettache, “Negotiations”; Badri, “Nigerien Tribes”; Badri, “Hommes.” 109. Anonymous UK official discussion, 2015; Arroudj, “La reddition.” 110. Ouazani, “Sale temps.” 111. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 6. 112. Professor A discussion; Ahmed, “Homegrown Terrorism,” 5. 113. Professor A discussion; Jibwis Nigeria, “Sheikh Yakubu.” 114. Kane, Muslim Modernity, 105–106. 115. Hakeem, “Dogon.” 116. Professor A discussion. 117. Falola, Violence in Nigeria, 105. 118. Professor A discussion. 119. J. Ibrahim, “Politics of Religion,” 67. 120. Balogun, “When Knowledge Is There,” 136–138. 121. J. Ibrahim, “Politics of Religion,” 67; Professor A discussion. 122. Thiam, “Enquête,” 3; Idrissa, “Invention of Order,” 238. 123. Kraft, “Churches.” 124. Kenny, “Sharia and Christianity,” 346; Kaduna State TV, “Islamic Cleric.” 125. Agence France-Presse, “Kaduna Muslims.” 126. Ben Amara, “Izala Movement,” 190. 127. Ibid.; Professor A discussion; Ahmed, “Homegrown Terrorism,” 5; Wali, “Letter.” 128. Wali, “Letter”; Agence France-Presse, “Kaduna Muslims.” 129. Elischer, “Autocratic,” 591–592; Idrissa, “Invention of Order,” 238; Grégoire, “Islam,” 111. 130. Muhammed, “Contemporary Islamic Learning,” 218. 131. U. Muhammad, “Reminiscence.” 132. Sulaiman.yakubu Musa, “Bude.” 133. Ismail, “Al-Turki’s Phone Theft”; Riyadhul Qur’an Islamic School Katsina, “Untitled Post.” 134. Meunier, “Marabouts,” 542–544. 135. Gumi, “Speech.” 136. Ibid.; Paden, Ahmadu Bello, 541. 137. Aminu Ibrahim, “Role of Jama’atul Izalatil,” 40–41. 138. Meunier, “Enseignements,” 631; Meunier, “Marabouts,” 544; US Embassy Niamey, “Islam in Niger”; Idrissa, “Invention of Order,” 254–256. 139. Elischer, “Autocratic,” 591. 140. Loimeier, Islamic Reform, 171. 141. Ibid. 142. Oguntokun, “Kaduna Boils”; Daniel, “The World.” 143. Obadare, “Theory and Practice,” 198. 144. Ibid. 145. Baba-Ahmed interview. 146. Makinde and Ostien, “The Independent Sharia Panel,” 931. 147. Paden, Religion and Political Culture, 471. 148. Daura, “Ibrahim Tahir.” 149. US Department of State, “Muslims and Politics”; US Consulate Kaduna, “Libyan Connection”; CIA, “Africa Review,” 5. 150. CIA, “Africa Review,” 5–7. 151. Ibid. 152. US Embassy Lagos, “Funeral.” 153. McGreal, “Islamic Law.” 154. Baba-Ahmed interview. 155. Liman, Hajj 91, 48–49. 156. Aisha interview, 2019.

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157. Brigaglia, “Slicing Off the Tumour,” 217. 158. Al-Barnawi, “Slicing Off the Tumor.” 159. Hegghammer, “Jihadi Salafis.” 160. Ahmed, “Homegrown Terrorism,” 6. 161. Ahmed, “Homegrown Terrorism,” 6; S. M. discussion. 162. Gwarzo, “Activities,” 305; Ahmed, “Homegrown Terrorism,” 6. 163. Ahmed, “Homegrown Terrorism,” 6. 164. Oshunkeye, “Big Hunt.” 165. Ibid. 166. Ogundele, “Suspect Admits Links.” 167. Nigerian Voice, “Boko Haram Member.” 168. Vanguard, “FG Arraigns Nigerian Leader.” 169. Tlemcani, “Cas Énigmatique”; Ahmed, “Homegrown Terrorism,” 7. 170. This was possibly an incorrect reference to Mali, although “other suspects” were reportedly “intercepted and handed over to the Nigerian government by the Libyan government” at roughly the same time as Harun’s arrest in Libya. Ogundele, “Suspect Admits.” 171. Ige, “Dokubo Threatens”; Nwabughiogu, “Dokubo-Asari.” 172. Kassim discussion. 173. Aisha interview, 2019. 174. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 7. 175. ICG, “Islamist Terrorism,” 22; Ahmed, “Homegrown Terrorism,” 6–7; Ouazani, “Sale temps.” 176. Ministère de l’Intérieur, “Condensé d’Éléments,” 12. 177. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 7. 178. Thurston, Salafism in Nigeria, 222; Loimeier, “Boko Haram.” 179. Musa Ibrahim, “In Search of a Plausible Theory,” 29; Pantami interview. 180. Aisha interview, 2018. 181. Pérouse de Montclos, “Boko Haram,” 1. 182. Al-Akhbar, “Al-Qaeda Leaders”; Kafa and Habib, “Clash of Civilizations,” 3. See also al-Suri, “Testimony,” 61. 183. Hegghammer, “Rise of Muslim Foreign Fighters,” 88. 184. Hegghammer, “Origins of Global Jihad.” 185. Ouazani, “Fin de cavale.” (Katsina is likely mistaken for Yobe in the article.) 186. Al Jazeera, “Top Islamist Fighter Escapes.” 187. ICG, “Islamist Terrorism,” 22; Adoguast, “L’emir,” 17:30–20:30; Al Jazeera, “Top Islamist Fighter Escapes”; Smith, “Chad Rebel Group.” 188. Anonymous Western European intelligence official discussion. 189. Al-Ansari, “Message from Nigeria,” 19. 190. Nasrullah, “Break Down.” 191. Hisham, “Exclusive Interview.” 192. Al-Ansari, “Message from Nigeria,” 19. 193. Hisham, “Exclusive Interview,” 6. 194. Ibid. 195. Ibid. 196. Middle East Monitor, “Algeria.” 197. Wright, “Islam and Decolonization in Africa,” 226; Nsaibia, Twitter, January 13, 2017. 198. Sounaye, “Salafi Revolutionaries,” 1, 11. 199. Wehrey and Boukhars, Salafism in the Maghreb, 67–68. 200. Ibid. 201. Porter, “AQIM.” 202. El-Zein, “Why Does Al-Jazeera,” 22–23, 32. 203. Casey, “Suffering,” 14; Harnischfeger, “9/11 in Nigeria.” 204. Kano city’s population included Kano Municipal, Fagge, Dala, Gwale, Tarauni, Nasarawa, Ungogo, and Kumbotso local government areas. See NBS, “2006 Population Census.” 205. Casey, “Policing,” 93, 107–109. 206. Hoechner, “Porridge,” 272, 282. 207. Porter, “AQIM”; Ahmed, “Homegrown Terrorism,” 6.

3 Al-Qaeda in Nigeria

Despite GSPC expansion to the Sahel and northern Nigeria, only Nigerians had formed a jihadist group distinct from the GSPC by 2003: Boko Haram. In contrast, the GSPC and later AQIM subsumed other West African jihadists until key commanders from the region split from AQIM in 2011, discussed in Chapter 9. One reason for Nigerian jihadists’ greater independence than other West Africans was language. Nigerian jihadists, for example, generally did not speak colloquial Arabic or French, whereas Algerians and West African jihadist commanders did. Additionally, there were Arab communities in Mauritania and Mali, but few in Nigeria or Niger. This enabled Algerian GSPC commanders, including Mokhtar Belmokhtar, to recruit fellow Arab subcommanders in Mauritania and Mali, including Malian trafficker Sultan Ould Bady, and marry into Arab tribes, including Oumar Hamaha’s in Timbuktu, Mali.1 As a result, the GSPC and AQIM embedded locally, especially in Mali, and migrated southward in the Sahel. This was important because Algerian military pressure, the GIA’s alienation of Algeria’s Muslim masses, and Algerian government amnesties caused the jihad in Algeria to wane in the early 2010s. Furthermore, because Nigeria’s Muslim population alone was twice that of Mauritania, Mali, and Niger combined, and because northern Nigeria lacked the vast deserts GSPC members knew from the Sahel, population and geography made Nigerian jihadists suitable for greater organizational independence. However, jihadism was also slow to develop indigenously in the Sahel because there was less of an impetus for Muslim self-defense in Mauritania, Mali, and Niger, which all had small Christian populations. Only in Mauritania did political repression correlate with a rise in jihadism around 2003, as mentioned in subsequent chapters. Mali only became engulfed by

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jihadism when the country collapsed as a result of regional instability emanating from the 2011 Libyan civil war and a 2012 military coup in Mali’s capital, Bamako. Meanwhile, Niger suffered primarily from spillover from jihadism in Mali in its northern regions and from Boko Haram in its southeastern region throughout the 2010s. In contrast, the legacy of Kafanchan and other Muslim-Christian clashes in Nigeria, combined with the especially intense geopolitical jostling for religious influence in Nigeria, spurred Nigerian Muslims’ demand for self-defense and eventually sharia and jihad from the 1980s onward. These three themes also became part of Muhammed Yusuf’s dawa and that of other leaders in Boko Haram and Ansaru. Despite Nigerian jihadists’ independence, GSPC members still cooperated with the Nigerians and played roles as intermediaries between Boko Haram and envoys sent from al-Qaeda Central to the Sahel and Nigeria in the period surrounding 9/11. Bin Laden’s Envoy in the Sahel Although Nigerian jihadists and Nigerian Salafis identify 2002–2003 as Boko Haram’s founding period, preceding events that remain unexplored involve Bin Laden’s deployment of his Yemeni envoy, Abu Muhammed alYemeni,2 from Afghanistan to the Sahel on a two-leg mission.3 On the first leg, which commenced in June 2001, al-Yemeni met Mokhtar Belmokhtar, Hisham Abu Akram, and Hassan Allane and reportedly visited Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria by early 2002.4 The second leg was mostly in Algeria in late 2002 and followed al-Yemeni’s brief July 2002 return to Pakistan.5 Al-Yemeni was an Afghan jihad military trainer and traveled with Bin Laden to Sudan in 1991. He also trafficked weapons from Somalia to militants in Yemen’s 1990s civil war and facilitated North African Afghan jihad veterans’ return to Algeria to fight with the GIA, such as Belmokhtar, Hisham, and Allane, on Bin Laden’s dime.6 Bin Laden also sent al-Yemeni on a 1998 mission from Afghanistan to the Sahel to convince Algerians to join the GSPC, which Belmokhtar, Hisham, and Allane did.7 In June 2001, Bin Laden again sent al-Yemeni from Afghanistan to meet the GSPC. This mission was organized by Yemeni Afghan jihad veteran Abu Ali al-Harithi,8 who was among Bin Laden’s Yemeni bodyguards in Khartoum, where he also met Hisham.9 More than a year before al-Harithi’s death in Yemen in the first ever US drone strike on al-Qaeda in November 2002, he contacted the GSPC’s communications officer to coordinate al-Yemeni’s meetings with Belmokhtar in Niger.10 A eulogy of al-Yemeni written after his September 2002 death noted that al-Yemeni passed through Saudi Arabia and met prominent Saudi Salafi scholars Hamoud al-Aqla al-Shuebi, Ali al-Khudair, and Sulaiman alAlwan, who condoned suicide bombings and 9/11.11 These meetings

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demonstrate how certain Saudi scholars were ideologically aligned with alQaeda until Saudi Arabia suppressed them after AQAP’s attacks in Riyadh in May 2003, which were masterminded by al-Alwan’s brother-in-law, Yusuf al-Ayeri. The eulogy further noted that al-Yemeni maintained “permanent contact” (itisal daim) with “brothers from the Arabian Peninsula” and especially al-Harithi during the mission’s first leg.12 Another Saudi-Yemeni national who seems to have contacted al-Yemeni was Abd al-Rahman al-Nashiri.13 Before al-Nashiri’s October 2002 arrest and extradition to Guantanamo for masterminding the USS Cole bombing, he reportedly expected an operative, perhaps al-Yemeni, to inspect Moroccobased jihadists planning attacks on US ships in the Strait of Gibraltar.14 However, that cell was uncovered in May 2002.15 Al-Yemeni was, therefore, deployed to the Sahel by Bin Laden but reported to al-Qaeda members on the Arabian Peninsula, including al-Harithi and possibly al-Nashiri. The purpose for al-Yemeni’s June 2001 mission was to observe the GSPC’s status. Therefore, Belmokhtar and Hisham escorted al-Yemeni from Niger to Algeria to meet Amari Saifi, but Belmokhtar and Saifi deliberately avoided meeting overall GSPC leader Hassan Hattab, who was uninterested in al-Qaeda and even imprisoned Attiya during Attiya’s inspection of the GIA on Bin Laden’s orders in 1993.16 They told al-Yemeni the route to Hattab was dangerous, and their ploy succeeded because on al-Yemeni’s July 2002 return to Pakistan he only informed Bin Laden that the GSPC was no longer takfirprone like the GIA and that its separation from the GIA had succeeded.17 This preserved the GSPC’s opportunity for future al-Qaeda affiliation. Prior to al-Yemeni’s return to Pakistan, he also reportedly visited northern Mali, Niger, and Nigeria. In northern Mali, he instructed GSPC fighters on “tactics and topography,” accompanied Belmokhtar to meet arms dealers and tribal leaders, and, according to US officials, planned attacks on the US embassy in Mali’s capital, Bamako.18 Al-Yemeni’s travels with Belmokhtar also corresponded to the time after 9/11 when Belmokhtar recruited several traffickers who later become prominent jihadists, including Sultan Ould Bady.19 Hisham was with al-Yemeni on 9/11, which surprised them, indicating they were not informed about the operation by Bin Laden or other alQaeda members, including 9/11 financier and fellow Yemeni national Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who reportedly urged Bin Laden to send al-Yemeni on the June 2001 mission.20 Al-Yemeni may also have returned to Pakistan around July 2002 before returning to the Sahel again because communications to alQaeda couriers were severed due to post-9/11 War on Terror arrests.21 After 9/11, GSPC commanders convened in Algeria. According to Hisham, al-Yemeni was a “great addition,” and the meeting resulted in “influxes” of “emigrant mujahidin brothers” joining the GSPC in the Sahel and desiring to meet its leadership “one or two years later from Shinqiti [Mauritania], Libya, Nigeria, Morocco and Tunisia.”22 Following this

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meeting, al-Yemeni reportedly traveled to Nigeria in early 2002, and Muhammed Ali’s followers later established camps in northern Yobe, including Zaji-Biriri village and later Kanama, which represented new stages in the Nigerian jihadist community’s development. Moreover, when Kanama camp was destroyed in 2003, an “influx” of Nigerians joined the GSPC. Although these Nigerians amounted to only several dozen jihadists, the GSPC’s post-9/11 meeting with al-Yemeni may have improved mechanisms for bringing Nigerians and other West Africans to GSPC camps. A declassified 2003 US Defense Intelligence Agency document confirmed that al-Yemeni trained the GSPC before crisscrossing the West African region and spending several weeks “in each of the Sahel countries,” including Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Chad, by early 2002. Al-Yemeni traversed these countries because “al-Qaeda has already decided to utilize the GSPC and its networks to re-deploy in the sub-Saharan region in order to create a base there.”23 From Muhammed Ali’s perspective, the Zaji-Biriri and Kanama camps were plausibly jihadist “bases” because they formed after Ali and his disciples received years of funding and training from Algerian jihadists and al-Qaeda and around one and a half years after 9/11. Moreover, if not after 9/11, when would ever be the right time for Ali to establish bases for mobilizing Nigeria’s jihadist community? Post-9/11 Funding to Boko Haram Al-Yemeni was killed in September 2002 in counterterrorism operations in Algeria. The United States reportedly contributed to identifying his corpse, if not also tracking his movements with newly installed Sahel-based spy equipment.24 Before his death, al-Yemeni and his al-Qaeda counterparts on the Arabian Peninsula still may have coordinated funding for Muhammed Ali’s jihadist project in Nigeria. Hisham wrote in his eulogy of al-Yemeni that after the GSPC’s post9/11 meeting, al-Yemeni embarked on a “communications assignment” (muhimet al-itisal) but without providing details since Hisham did not accompany al-Yemeni.25 However, the assignment coincided with alYemeni’s reported travel to Nigeria. Hassan Allane, who was “al-Qaeda’s interface in the Sahel” and reportedly welcomed al-Yemeni to the Sahel, was more likely than Hisham to escort al-Yemeni in Niger and Nigeria as those two countries were Allane’s bases.26 Whether al-Yemeni was only in Niger, Mali, and Algeria, which primary accounts such as Hisham’s affirm, or also in Nigeria, which government and journalistic accounts affirm, is uncertain. Nevertheless, alYemeni’s activities in the region could have involved transferring funds to Muhammed Ali. This was because of al-Yemeni’s relationship with Allane, and then Allane’s relationship with Yusuf Ahmed, who was described as a

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GSPC element when he was killed with Allane.27 Moreover, Yusuf Ahmed and Muhammed Ali were the only two Boko Haram leaders who reportedly knew the group’s clandestine funding sources.28 Ansaru’s post-2013 leader, Abu Usama al-Ansari, indicated in his alRisalah article that “immense wealth” for “supporting the jihad in Nigeria” was provided by “members of al-Qaeda residing in the Arabian Peninsula” to Muhammed Ali. However, after 9/11 the funds were stolen by Ali’s “shaykh and mentor” using the alias Abu al-Bara al-Dourawi, who “resigned from performing jihad,” became “opposed to the mujahidin,” and fled to Saudi Arabia for “fear of being arrested.”29 This would have inhibited Boko Haram’s becoming sufficiently equipped to combat Nigeria’s security forces by the December 2003 Kanama camp clashes. Abu al-Bara al-Dourawi’s surname indicates he was from Daura, Katsina State. According to Abu Aisha, this alias did not refer to Shaikh Jaafar, even though he hailed from Daura and shared similar history with al-Dourawi, such as engaging Muhammed Ali or his followers but opposing jihad after 9/11. Rather, Abu Aisha recalled that Boko Haram’s preachers received donations because they earned reputations for Taliban-like piousness, and “Bin Laden and his people were convinced that Muhammad Ali was the one who showed the most commitment to jihad.”30 However, the group’s preachers engaged in infighting and clashed when increasing funding arrived after 9/11, including from some donors who believed the group was committed only to dawa, and not jihad.31 One scholar matching alAnsari’s description of Abu al-Bara al-Dourawi fled to Saudi Arabia with the group’s donations and never returned to Nigeria.32 After 9/11, international counterterrorism financing sanctions for receiving money from alQaeda sources were being strictly enforced, and only weeks before 9/11 Yakubu Musa was arrested possessing GSPC funds, reportedly after the CIA tipped off Nigerian authorities.33 Therefore, Salafi preachers like Abu al-Bara al-Dourawi who received funds from al-Qaeda or GSPC donors after 9/11 would have at least recognized the possibility of arrest. Al-Yemeni may have been responsible for authorizing funds for Ali because al-Yemeni was in “permanent contact” with al-Qaeda members on the Arabian Peninsula who, according to Abu Usama al-Ansari, provided such funds.34 Moreover, once al-Yemeni traveled to Nigeria or was briefed by Allane on the Nigerian jihadists with whom Allane collaborated since 1994, al-Yemeni could vouch to those al-Qaeda contacts on the Arabian Peninsula that Nigerian jihadists were preparing for jihad after 9/11. These al-Qaeda contacts would have included al-Harithi, whose deputies managed al-Qaeda’s finances, if not also pro-al-Qaeda Saudi Salafi scholars with Islamic charity contacts.35 Al-Yemeni himself had funding capabilities. When US forces invaded Baghdad, they found numerous documents in Iraqi government buildings,

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including one about al-Yemeni on letterhead from Iraq’s embassy in Pakistan.36 The document, dated January 17, 2003, stated the name on alYemeni’s fake Niger passport that Belmokhtar provided him and alYemeni’s hometown and noted al-Yemeni was “sent to Algeria” to “contact the Algerian [GSPC]” and “deliver money to them.”37 Considering this Iraqi document, al-Yemeni’s deployment to the Sahel by Bin Laden, and alYemeni’s al-Qaeda contacts on the Arabian Peninsula, al-Yemeni likely was senior enough to authorize funding for the GSPC or other Sahel- or Nigeriabased jihadists from al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda donors based on the Arabian Peninsula. If not for al-Yemeni, it is unclear how Arabian Peninsula-based al-Qaeda members could otherwise have connected with, and provided funds for, Muhammed Ali after 9/11, as Abu Usama al-Ansari described. If al-Yemeni authorized funds from Arabian Peninsula–based al-Qaeda members for Nigerian jihadists, and particularly Muhammed Ali, it would have been known to “al-Qaeda’s interface in the Sahel” and al-Yemeni’s escort, GSPC member Hassan Allane. Typical of al-Qaeda, the funding would, therefore, most likely be laundered through Islamic charities and the GSPC, and finally to Muhammed Ali or scholars allied with him. Such scholars would include Ali’s “shaykh and mentor,” Abu al-Bara al-Dourawi, or Yusuf Ahmed and Muhammed Yusuf, who, as discussed in the next chapter, both preached in northern Nigeria after 9/11.38 This funding chain is possible because, according to Aminu Wali’s letter to the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee and US officials, a “Kano-based businessman” and al-Muntada alIslami employee, Alhaji Haruna Sharu, was a GSPC “agent . . . financing extremist and terrorist activities by laundering proceeds from smuggled goods.”39 Sharu reportedly operated under the “GSPC network” leader, who was Izala’s Katsina chairman and Ahlussunna preacher Yakubu Musa, who himself received Allane in Nigeria and was accused of possessing GSPC funds and equipment when arrested in July 2001.40 Weeks after Kanama camp’s destruction, Sharu was arrested for “channeling money to the [Nigerian] Taliban” and “confessed to acting as a middleman” between al-Muntada al-Islami and the “Taliban.”41 According to Nigeria’s domestic intelligence agency, the State Security Service (SSS),42 the Sudanese al-Muntada al-Islami director in Kano, Muhyideen Abdullahi, and Sharu transferred tens of thousands of dollars between each other.43 Abdullahi, however, responded to allegations that al-Muntada al-Islami funded the “Taliban” through Sharu by claiming he only provided funds to Sharu to repay loans, which were originally provided to al-Muntada alIslami’s Kano office by Sharu on orders from Sharu’s boss in Niger, who was Abdullahi’s friend and had businesses in Kano. The purpose of Sharu’s loans to al-Muntada al-Islami was purportedly to compensate for post-9/11 terrorism financing restrictions delaying transfers from al-Muntada alIslami’s London headquarters to its Kano office.44 Abdullahi further

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acknowledged investigations of al-Muntada al-Islami began when an arrested Kanama camp member stated the al-Muntada Mosque, where Shaikh Jaafar preached, was the member’s address. However, Abdullahi denied knowing that member and asserted that al-Muntada al-Islami does not “encourage militancy” and its “objective is Islamic propagation,” including supporting Quranic schools and mosques.45 Thus, according to the allegations and admissions, Muhyideen Abdullahi’s friend, who was Sharu’s boss in Niger, ordered Sharu to provide money to Abdullahi, and then Abdullahi returned the money to Sharu to repay Sharu’s loan. Sharu then used that money to fund the “Taliban” as a “middleman” before the Kanama camp clashes. The identity of Sharu’s boss in Niger and whether that boss had relations with Islamic charities, al-Qaeda, or the GSPC in Niger, like Hassan Allane did, was unstated. Nevertheless, if Sharu was a GSPC “agent,” it is plausible the source of Sharu’s funds came from alQaeda donors in Saudi Arabia through the GSPC. One hypothesis to explain the claims in Abu Usama al-Ansari’s alRisalah article, which like other al-Qaeda memoirs and biographies, including Hisham’s, was generally “balanced,” is that Saudi businessmen collaborated with al-Qaeda members on the Arabian Peninsula, who were in permanent contact with Abu Muhammed al-Yemeni, to fund Allane’s GSPC network. This GSPC network extended to Nigeria through al-Muntada alIslami’s employee and GSPC “agent” Sharu.46 The funds were then provided from Sharu to the “Taliban’s” Salafi preachers, including Abu al-Bara al-Dourawi, if not also to Muhammed Yusuf and Yusuf Ahmed, and were intended for Muhammed Ali’s jihadist project.47 However, in the case recalled by Abu Usama al-Ansari, al-Dourawi embezzled, and Ali never received, certain post-9/11 funds from al-Qaeda members on the Arabian Peninsula, or their donors, because al-Dourawi traveled to Saudi Arabia and never returned with the funds. This case resembled other unproven allegations made against al-Muntada al-Islami in Kenya. Intelligence officials there claimed to intercept communications between Saudi Arabia’s defense attaché and the Nairobi-based Sudanese al-Muntada al-Islami director about al-Qaeda’s suicide bombings at the Israeli-owned Mombasa hotel in 2002, which killed twelve people, and future funding from a “wealthy Saudi shaikh” for al-Muntada al-Islami.48 In March 2004, US officials learned from a “high-level source” in Nigeria’s government that Sharu was a “disgruntled employee” of al-Muntada alIslami.49 He reportedly informed the SSS about Muhyideen Abdullahi’s “provid[ing] security information” to “a splinter Islamic cult involved in violent confrontations with Nigerian authorities in Yobe state last December [2003].”50 The officials, therefore, referred to the December 2003 Kanama camp clashes and indicated Abdullahi had advance knowledge of the Kanama camp crackdown. The US officials, however, reported that Nigeria

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found no evidence of Abdullahi’s own ties to either the “splinter cult,” which was known as “Al-Sunna [Ahlussunna] group,” or to “international terrorism.”51 In Kano, thousands of Sufis led by prominent late Shaikh Nasiru Kabara’s son nevertheless protested al-Muntada al-Islami’s “causing religious unrest” and demanded Kano’s government close its office in March 2004.52 This also resembled allegations in the 1990s that al-Muntada alIslami and Muhammad Surur’s followers created “sectarian tensions” with Ghanaian and Somalian Sufis.53 In Somalia, members in al-Shabaab’s predecessor group, al-Itihaad al-Islami (Islamic Union), were also reportedly proud to be called “Sururis” (followers of Surur).54 Al-Muntada al-Islami withstood the pressure, and its Kano office was operational again by 2006.55 Moreover, Sharu continued presiding over Izala events at Kano’s al-Muntada Mosque and maintained Izala leadership positions more than a decade after Kanama camp’s destruction, just as Yakubu Musa did in Katsina.56 However, Sharu’s alleged role as a GSPC agent transferring funds from al-Muntada al-Islami’s director to Kanama camp members demonstrated that Boko Haram leaders, especially Muhammed Ali and Yusuf Ahmed, had ties to jihadist funding networks abroad.57 Moreover, Abu al-Bara al-Dourawi’s embezzling funds would have provided future Boko Haram and Ansaru leaders like Abu Usama al-Ansari additional reasons to view Nigerian Salafi preachers as untrustworthy and insufficiently committed to jihad. Al-Qaeda Operations in Nigeria Despite al-Yemeni’s death, his mission may have contributed to not only funding intended for Boko Haram but also the 2003 Nigeria mission by alQaeda member Ibrahim Harun, who was raised in Saudi Arabia by his parents from Niger. Harun was interested in the Afghan jihad in his youth and traveled to Afghanistan before 9/11 where he received the alias Spinghul. Meaning “white rose” in Pashto, it honored a Somali martyr who used that alias during the Afghan jihad.58 After celebrating 9/11 at al-Qaeda training camps, Harun relocated to Angur Ada village on Pakistan’s side of the border with Afghanistan. When Harun was arrested in Italy in 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interviewed him. Harun recalled ten Angur Ada cofighters from Australia,59 Jordan, Tunisia, and Yemen, including Abu Muhammed al-Yemeni.60 In addition, Harun recalled meeting Ramzi bin al-Shibh; three masterminds of al-Qaeda’s 1998 US embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, including Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani; al-Qaeda’s expert bomb-maker, Egyptian Abu Khabab al-Masri; California-born al-Qaeda propagandist, Adam Gadahn; and al-Qaeda’s training camp financier, Palestinian Abu Zubaydah.61 The FBI verified that a notebook captured during Abu Zubaydah’s 2002 arrest in Pakistan contained Harun’s name with his parents’ Saudi phone

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number under emergency contacts in case a fighter was killed.62 That was among other evidence corroborating Harun’s statements to FBI interrogators. Al-Yemeni was likely to have recommended Harun for a Nigeria mission after their July 2002 stint together in Angur Ada due to Harun’s unique fluency in Arabic and Hausa.63 Whatever Harun, al-Yemeni, and other al-Qaeda members discussed, the result was that Harun became al-Qaeda’s first operative sent from Pakistan to conduct attacks in Nigeria targeting the US embassy, modeled on al-Qaeda’s 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.64 However, Harun also facilitated trainings for Nigerians at GSPC camps with Yusuf Ahmed and Muhammed Ashafa and arranged Ashafa’s courier work between the GSPC, Boko Haram, and al-Qaeda in Pakistan.65 Thus, Harun’s mission resembled not only al-Yemeni’s own targeting of the US embassy in Bamako, Mali, but also al-Yemeni’s liaising between the GSPC and al-Qaeda. Harun’s mission also demonstrated that al-Qaeda in Pakistan had communication lines to Boko Haram in 2003 at least through the GSPC, Harun, Yusuf Ahmed, and their intermediaries. These communications were further implied by Ashafa’s escorting Harun in Nigeria after Harun’s arrival, which must have been prearranged by GSPC members in Nigeria, such as Allane, Yusuf Ahmed, or other Boko Haram liaisons to alQaeda.66 Similar to Allane’s arrival in Katsina in 1994, Harun would not have arrived at the Lagos airport in 2003 without being expected. Harun’s Nigeria mission would have benefited from contacts al-Yemeni established between al-Qaeda and the GSPC, if not also Boko Haram members. In Hisham’s 2009 letter to “the brothers in Afghanistan” found in Bin Laden’s compound, for example, he recounted how al-Yemeni’s missions contributed to the GSPC’s maintaining contact with al-Qaeda.67 Belmokhtar similarly recalled how after al-Yemeni’s death, another Mauritanian GSPC member, Yunus al-Mauritani,68 continued “direct contact” between al-Qaeda and the GSPC, culminating in the GSPC’s affiliation with al-Qaeda and 2007 rebranding as AQIM.69 Despite al-Yemeni’s death, his mission, therefore, enabled other operatives to liaise between West African jihadists, including in the GSPC, and al-Qaeda. While this was short-lived for Harun, who fled Nigeria after Muhammed Ashafa’s 2004 arrest and was arrested in Libya in 2005, al-Mauritani operated until his 2011 arrest in Pakistan and deportation to Mauritania for imprisonment. A highly clandestine operative, al-Mauritani’s “powerful mark” on Bin Laden and his senior role in alQaeda, including liaising between Bin Laden and other high-level members, was unknown to most analysts until al-Mauritani’s arrest and the release of documents from Bin Laden’s compound several years later.70 A turning point before Harun’s Nigeria mission was an April 2003 battle. This occurred when Harun’s Angur Ada cofighters escalated rocket fire toward US troops in Afghanistan to undermine US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s Kabul visit to announce that “only pockets of resistance”

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remained in Afghanistan.71 While Harun recovered from gunshot wounds, he met other high-level al-Qaeda commanders, including the Iraqi Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi,72 who was al-Qaeda’s Afghanistan-Pakistan border operations head and whose courier, Usaid al-Yemeni, was among Harun’s cofighters.73 According to Harun, Usaid al-Yemeni was also one of “Osama’s officials.”74 Since al-Yemeni was unlikely to personally meet with Bin Laden in Bin Laden’s top-secret post-9/11 hideout, which was reportedly near Angur Ada before moving to Abbottabad around 2005, al-Yemeni might have informed Bin Laden through his compatriot, Usaid al-Yemeni, about his Sahel mission’s first leg and Harun’s viability for the follow-up mission in Nigeria.75 After accepting Harun’s loyalty pledge (baya) to Bin Laden on Bin Laden’s behalf, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi introduced Harun to the Libyan Abu Faraj al-Libi,76 who had communication lines to Bin Laden and was alQaeda’s third-in-command behind al-Zawahiri.77 Al-Libi then introduced Harun to the Egyptian Hamza Rabia, who had joined the Afghan jihad when he was seventeen years old, becoming al-Zawahiri’s bodyguard and later replacing 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Muhammed (KSM) as alQaeda’s external operations head after KSM’s 2003 arrest in his native Pakistan.78 Rabia lodged Harun and al-Libi near Angur Ada in Shkai village, which was al-Qaeda’s post-9/11 “command-and-control center.”79 In Shkai, Rabia trained Harun and Pakistani militants in coding, which was observed by the Pakistani Hassan Ghul. After Ghul’s 2005 arrest in Iraqi Kurdistan, he provided information to the United States about a Shkai-based “Saudi of African descent,” which was Harun, and a courier the United States reportedly tracked to Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound before the raid in which he was killed in 2011.80 When Harun finished this training in Shkai, Rabia deployed him to Nigeria in August 2003. Al-Qaeda probably decided to target Nigeria after al-Yemeni’s July 2002 stint in Pakistan. However, Harun was not deployed to Nigeria until he concluded his mission with the April 2003 battle against US forces. Al-Qaeda’s intent to target Nigeria before that April 2003 battle was demonstrated by Bin Laden’s stating in a February 2003 video aired by Al Jazeera: “to break free from tyrannical and apostate regimes enslaved by America and establish Allah’s rule on earth, among regions ready for liberation are Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, [Saudi Arabia], Yemen and Pakistan.”81 Bin Laden rarely referenced countries randomly, so this first ever mention of Nigeria was significant. Al-Qaeda’s external operations commanders presumably had plans for Nigeria, about which those al-Qaeda commanders or other al-Qaeda propagandists who met Harun informed Bin Laden. Abu Muhammed al-Yemeni may also have informed Bin Laden through Usaid al-Yemeni or another courier, if not personally, that Nigerians were already preparing for jihad. The August 2003 Nigerian mission that Harun eventually undertook explains why Bin Laden uniquely mentioned Nigeria in this statement.

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If Harun’s mission succeeded, then Bin Laden’s statement, which raised alarm in Nigeria, would have proven al-Qaeda’s ability to fulfill Bin Laden’s threats. Nigeria’s National Intelligence Agency director-general, for example, observed in 2005 that Nigeria was the only country Bin Laden mentioned in the statement that al-Qaeda had not yet attacked while also recalling Nigerian jihadists’ being killed in Niger and Chad in clashes involving Allane and Amari Saifi in 2004.82 Other countries mentioned in Bin Laden’s statement suffered major al-Qaeda attacks shortly after its broadcast: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in May 2003; Casablanca, Morocco, in 2004; and Amman, Jordan, in 2005. Had Ashafa’s 2004 arrest in Pakistan and deportation to Nigeria not forced Harun to leave Nigeria, then Nigeria might have made that list. The Foiled Plot After Harun’s arrival in Nigeria, Muhammed Ashafa scouted targets with him alongside Ashafa’s assistant, nicknamed Maradona, who was probably as short as Argentinian football star Diego Maradona.83 This demonstrated group members’ exposure to Western influence despite opposing it. Ashafa stored explosives they acquired at his house in Kano, where he lodged Harun with members of the “militia arm of the Nigerian Taliban” whom Harun and Yusuf Ahmed intended to send to GSPC camps in the Sahel.84 Ashafa could not assist Harun in targeting the US embassy, however, because in 2003 it was being relocated from Nigeria’s former capital, Lagos, to Abuja, and Harun deemed it unsuitable for attack. Harun instead explored other Western targets consistent with Bin Laden’s global jihad doctrine.85 After Ashafa assisted the Boko Haram youths’ travel to GSPC camps when the Kanama camp operation was under way, Harun sent Ashafa to Pakistan in April 2004 to deliver messages to, and train under, Hamza Rabia. This reflected Rabia’s methodology in two other external operations he plotted during Harun’s 2003–2004 Nigeria mission: the March 2004 Madrid train bombings, killing 193 people; and July 2005 London tube and bus bombings, killing 56 people.86 In those attacks Rabia provided Pakistan-based trainings either with al-Qaeda or Pakistani jihadist groups for experienced jihadists who previously lived in Madrid and London (Harun’s analogues), and then those jihadists recruited operatives locally in Madrid and London for more Pakistan-based trainings (Ashafa’s analogues). In turn, those recruits launched attacks with other local recruits remaining incountry (Maradona’s analogues). If KSM’s former Pakistani assistant, computer engineer Muhammed Naeem Noor Khan,87 who became Rabia’s assistant and disguised himself as a Tablighi Jamaat member when escorting Ashafa, had not been arrested in July 2004 with Rabia’s computers and turned into an informant, Ashafa might not have been arrested weeks later at the Karachi airport.88 Ashafa would then

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have returned to Nigeria with funds Rabia and Khan provided him to facilitate other Boko Haram members’ travel to Pakistan to train and then return to join Harun’s al-Qaeda cell in Kano.89 Ashafa would have also typified alQaeda “middle managers” by integrating grassroots jihadists, including members of the “militia arm of the Nigerian Taliban” in his house, with actual alQaeda operatives like Harun in Nigeria and Rabia in Pakistan, if not also Yusuf Ahmed.90 Encountering Harun, Ashafa, and other Boko Haram members who trained with al-Qaeda could have made Boko Haram’s grassroots jihadists, including those in Ashafa’s house, feel they were authentically Nigeria’s “Taliban” or al-Qaeda’s Nigerian representatives, even though they were actually removed from al-Qaeda Central by several degrees. After Ashafa’s arrest, Rabia ordered Harun to leave Nigeria.91 Harun crossed into Niger but returned to Nigeria to send coded e-mails to Rabia about his plan to flee to Libya because Niger barely had Internet in 2004.92 Harun was then arrested in Libya in 2005 and interrogated by a Nigerian SSS operative in a prison in Tripoli, Libya. He confessed that he met Yusuf Ahmed and Ashafa regarding sending Boko Haram members for GSPC trainings, deployed Ashafa to Pakistan, and targeted the US embassy and an Israeli-owned mall on Lagos’s affluent Victoria Island.93 In 2011, during Libya’s civil war, Libya’s government placed Harun on a boat with 1,000 sub-Saharan African migrants bound for Lampedusa, where he was detained when Italian border guards noticed his gunshot wounds and he attempted to jump off the boat.94 Harun later confessed to being the “head of al-Qaeda in West Africa” and was interrogated by the FBI and extradited to the United States.95 After standing trial in New York, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for plotting to bomb the US embassy in Nigeria and killing two US soldiers in the April 2003 battle coinciding with Donald Rumsfeld’s Kabul visit. Among evidence presented to convict Harun were US soldiers’ statements about seeing Harun during battle, his fingerprints on a Quran, and his name in a cofighter’s journal, the latter two recovered from the battle site.96 Additionally, six letters from Hamza Rabia to Harun were found on Ashafa’s hard drive when he was arrested in Pakistan. They were then provided to the FBI, repaired, and decoded.97 Along with copies of Ashafa’s passport and visas, these letters from Rabia that were intended for Harun were presented at Harun’s trial.98 The letters revealed that Rabia learned through letters Ashafa had passed to him from “Brother Abu Ibrahim” that there was a “jihad awakening” in Nigeria and “many youths, especially students of madrassas and mosques, are heading toward jihad action.” 99 Neither the letters nor Harun’s FBI interrogation transcripts revealed “Brother Abu Ibrahim’s” actual name. They only mentioned that he was “the GSPC leader” and transferred messages to Harun, which Harun passed to Ashafa, and Ashafa passed to his “al-Qaeda bosses” in Pakistan, including Rabia.100

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The alias Brother Abu Ibrahim might, therefore, refer to the Algerian Nabil Sahraoui, who was the GSPC leader from August 2003, the month Harun arrived in Nigeria, until Sahraoui’s August 2004 death in Algeria.101 Sahraoui’s alias was Abu Ibrahim Mustapha, and his legacy was his September 2003 pledge of loyalty to al-Qaeda one month after Harun’s arrival to Nigeria.102 Sahraoui’s alias, therefore, matches Brother Abu Ibrahim, and passing letters to al-Qaeda in Pakistan through Harun’s courier, Ashafa, including about Nigeria’s “jihad awakening,” was consistent with Sahraoui’s pro-al-Qaeda orientation. Sahraoui also would have acquired knowledge of Nigerians’ “jihad awakening” before Ashafa’s April 2004 travel to Pakistan from Kanama camp members who escaped to GSPC camps or from GSPC members who supported them and other Nigerian jihadists. Although Harun’s Nigeria plot proved unsuccessful, it represented alQaeda’s first external operations with Boko Haram through Muhammed Ali’s partner, Yusuf Ahmed, and Muhammed Yusuf’s follower, Muhammed Ashafa. Harun’s mission likely would not have occurred but for Abu Muhammed al-Yemeni’s previous Sahel mission and al-Yemeni’s stint alongside Harun in Pakistan. Another legacy of Harun’s mission was that attacking Western targets like the UN remained in the planning of Boko Haram’s “more militant al-Qaeda subset” that trained with the GSPC after Kanama camp’s destruction.103 Harun’s mission also demonstrated that alQaeda considered Nigeria a legitimate battleground for jihad. Al-Qaeda’s Nigeria Strategy While it was unclear whether Brother Abu Ibrahim’s letter to Rabia was written before or after Kanama camp’s December 2003 destruction, the six letters Rabia wrote to Harun that were seized from Ashafa in Pakistan were, according to FBI metadata evaluations, created on Rabia’s computer on June 28, 2004.104 It is notable, therefore, that Rabia’s letters to Harun never mentioned Kanama camp. This indicates Rabia considered al-Qaeda’s external operations in Nigeria more important than local concerns. Moreover, despite Kanama camp’s destruction, Boko Haram members persisted either in GSPC camps or elsewhere in Nigeria, as discussed in Abu Usama al-Ansari’s al-Risalah article and in Chapter 5. This exemplified how Boko Haram overcame short-term setbacks throughout its history to emerge stronger than before. Rabia’s letters to Harun corroborated Harun’s contacts with the GSPC. For example, Rabia recommended Harun cooperate with “Algerian brothers” in both Nigeria and Niger to acquire explosives.105 Citing the GSPC’s kidnappings of European tourists in 2003 and adopting Bin Laden’s terminology, Rabia explained to Harun that the “Nigerian brothers” should not “focus on the snake’s tail [Nigeria’s government] instead of its head [Jews and Americans]” because that “leads to isolation of the jihadists from the Muslim public.”106

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Based on al-Qaeda’s experience fighting the United States in Afghanistan, Rabia reminded Harun that only after “the head” is attacked does the Muslim public see the “fortitude of the jihadists” and “search for jihadists to train and arm them in order to rise against both the Americans and their agents [national governments].”107 Rabia also wrote that he learned from Brother Abu Ibrahim, presumably Nabil Sahraoui, about an “excellent opportunity to establish a base for jihadists in the [Sahel].” He then explained how al-Qaeda was establishing in the Sahel “mobile bases for basic and advanced training, especially in the field of explosives,” so Nigerian jihadists like Ashafa could avoid long, risky, and costly trips to Pakistan for training and “take refuge” in the Sahel after launching attacks on “the Jews and Americans” in Nigeria. Boko Haram exploited these mobile bases not only after Kanama camp’s destruction, but also after the larger July 2009 Nigerian government crackdown on the group. These mobile bases also reflected Bin Laden’s vision when he formed the “special committee” for coordinating between West African and Algerian jihadists in 1993, mentioned in Chapter 2. Whereas the GSPC could provide hands-on training to Boko Haram, Rabia envisioned al-Qaeda “providing advice and conveying experience” to Nigerian jihadists “lacking guidance” so they could “reach sophistication and become stronger.” Rabia believed it was important Harun recommend the “Nigerian brothers . . . communicate and meet at times the shaikhs and scholars who recognize the importance of jihad to defend Muslims and expel the infidels and their agents from Muslim lands.”108 Similar to AQIM’s own advice to Boko Haram five years later, discussed in Chapter 7, Rabia emphasized the need to receive support from Islamic scholars, which in Nigeria would involve Izala. However, Izala preachers’ support of jihad in Nigeria primarily revolved around defending Muslims from Christians during clashes, not attacking Nigeria’s government or Western targets. Furthermore, neither Muhammed Ali nor Muhammed Yusuf, Abubakar Shekau, Ansaru, or ISWAP ever succeeded in obtaining sufficient mainstream Nigerian Muslim scholarly support after 9/11. This demonstrated al-Qaeda’s difficulty in converting its plan to undermine Western interests in Nigeria into practice. Moreover, IS’s emphasis on controlling territory (tamkin) in Nigeria eventually proved more compatible with Boko Haram’s desire for declaring a dawla (state) in Nigeria. Bin Laden, in contrast, advised al-Qaeda affiliates, including AQAP and al-Shabaab, not to declare a dawla until people’s governance needs were first met.109 This advice was subsequently reflected in the AQIM leader’s cautious and patient approach toward Boko Haram’s waging jihad in Nigeria and other West African jihadists’ implementing sharia in Mali, discussed in Chapters 7 and 8. Rabia also considered Africa a “significant part of the world” and cited the 2003 US-backed military intervention in Liberia to oust Charles Taylor, where “forces from Nigeria were sent to control the situation with the Americans.” This was evidence that “Nigeria is considered an important country

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in West Africa” and “Americans are using Nigeria as their own base to control the region.”110 This also resembled how Bin Laden’s deputies in Khartoum were concerned about US involvement in West Africa and Liberian Muslims during Liberia’s first civil war from 1989 to 1996. However, in 2003, US-Nigeria relations were stronger than they had been in the 1990s because Nigeria shifted from military to civilian rule in 1999, which the United States advocated. Rabia also seemingly preferred Arab Boko Haram members. For example, he wrote to Harun that Ashafa claimed the “best brothers” were of “Arab nationalities.” Therefore, Rabia asserted he had no objection if Arabs, which may have referred to diaspora Boko Haram members or GSPC members, traveled to Pakistan for explosives training.111 Rabia may also have preferred Arabs because Ashafa was focused on his businesses and “not completely dedicated” to jihad. Rabia noted, however, Ashafa promised to focus only on jihad when he returned to Nigeria. This is also why Rabia advised Harun that fighters sent to Pakistan must be “personally motivated” and speak Arabic and English.112 As the letters never reached Harun because Ashafa was arrested and his computer and hard drive seized, Boko Haram never sent other fighters to Rabia. Moreover, Rabia was killed in 2005 in US drone strikes in Pakistan alongside the Moroccan mastermind of the Madrid train bombings and Spain’s former Tablighi Jamaat leader, Amer Azizi.113 Ashafa likely also reported to Rabia that Harun could not target the US embassy. This would explain why Rabia provided Harun with guidance on selecting other targets, such as “where Americans congregate,” including embassies, military bases, hotels, and “especially their petroleum companies.”114 Emphasizing petroleum companies also reflected Bin Laden’s “economic jihad” strategy, by which al-Qaeda aimed to target the US economy’s “weak spots.”115 Oil was also mentioned in al-Qaeda strategist Abu Bakr Naji’s 2004 book, Administration of Savagery,116 which called for “establishing an Islamic nation,” applied first to “priority regions,” including “Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Jordan, and Yemen,” and then worldwide.117 By listing in this book the countries Bin Laden already threatened al-Qaeda would attack in his February 2003 statement aired by Al Jazeera, Naji seemingly envisioned his book would influence Bin Laden. He apparently succeeded because the book was found in Bin Laden’s compound in 2011.118 Nevertheless, economic jihad represented another disconnect in Nigeria because Boko Haram rarely operated in southern Nigeria’s oil-producing areas 700 miles from Kano and farther from Borno. Rabia also advised Harun about operational security and urged him to “please not rush” because “it is a long war.” He further informed Harun about “African brothers,” including one named Dhiay, who arranged Harun’s travel to Nigeria. This indicated Boko Haram had wider logistics connections to alQaeda than only Muhammed Ali, Yusuf Ahmed, and the Harun-Ashafa-Rabia network, which might have allowed for Ali’s other followers and diaspora

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Nigerians to arrive in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Similar to Harun’s adopting a Somali fighter’s alias despite his roots in Niger and Hassan Ghul’s referring to Harun generically as “of African descent,” Rabia’s mention of an “African brother” reflected how al-Qaeda often lumped Africans together and sometimes generically called Africans “al-Sudani” (black African or Sudanese) instead of recognizing their specific nationalities as done with Arabs.119 Similarly, Nigerian Christians were racially described in al-Qaeda publications as “Black Crusaders.”120 Finally, Rabia updated Harun about the battlefield deaths of Shkai-based Uighur Chinese (“Turkistani”) and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) commanders, and he responded to messages Ashafa passed to him from Harun about marriage by advising Harun to wed only to avoid “falling into sin” because it distracts from operations.121 Despite Rabia’s advice intended for Boko Haram through Harun, Muhammed Ali and later Abubakar Shekau “rushed” to jihad and focused on “near enemy” targets. Muhammed Yusuf also proved too cautious about linking with al-Qaeda to facilitate major attacks under his leadership after Ali’s 2004 death. Nigeria offered promising opportunities, but, with the short-lived exception of Ansaru in 2012, al-Qaeda’s efforts were hindered by the decisionmaking, personalities, and strategies of Nigerian jihadist leaders that were incongruent with al-Qaeda’s objectives. Nevertheless, by the time of Kanama camp’s formation in 2003, alQaeda and the GSPC had contributed to establishing Nigeria’s jihadist community, which was initially accepted, if not also supported, by Nigerian Salafi scholars and local government officials, Islamic charities, and other donors to Islamic causes. With hindsight, however, they underestimated the jihadist community’s objectives and ramifications of ideologies emerging among its leaders until it was too late. The intensity of violence that occurred during the Kanama camp clashes caught everyone by surprise. Notes

1. Badri, “Nigerien Tribes.” 2. Real name: Iman Abdelwahid Ahmed Alwan. 3. Aisha interview, 2017; Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 125, 329–330; alAnsari, “Message from Nigeria,” 19; IS, al-Naba no. 41, 8–9; ISWAP, “Niger Raid,” 00:14; as-Sawarim, “Interview”; Pantami, “Theology and Jurisprudence,” 4. 4. Ouazani, “Sale temps”; United Press International, “Al-Qaida Makes a Move.” 5. Salem, Ben Laden, 54. 6. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 10; United States v. Usama,” 282, 339; Burke, “Terror”; Burke, Al-Qaeda, 218; Al-Hayah, “Algeria.” 7. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 10; Salem, Ben Laden, 47, 52. 8. Hisham, “Shaykh Abu,” 4; see BBC, “Profile: Ali Qaed.” 9. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 10; Hisham, “Shaykh Abu,” 3. 10. Hisham, “Shaykh Abu,” 3. 11. Said, “Some Feats,” 8; Majid, “Building,” 72. 12. Said, “Some Feats,” 8. 13. Berges, “Al-Qaeda.” 14. Frantz, “U.S. Enlists Morocco’s Help.”

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15. Lachhab and Ilhami, “Story of the Al-Qaeda Cell.” 16. al-Shishani, “Al-Qaeda Ideologue”; Hisham, “Shaykh Abu,” 5. 17. Salem, Ben Laden, 53. 18. Smith, “U.S. Training”; Hisham, “Shaykh Abu,” 5. 19. Arroudj, “La reddition.” 20. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 10; Salem, Ben Laden, 52. 21. Hisham, “Shaykh Usama,” 10. 22. Hisham, “Shaykh Abu,” 4. 23. DIA, “Al-Qaeda Activity.” 24. Al-Hayah, “Algeria”; Le Quotidien d’Oran, “Two Months”; Benchicou, “American Slap”; Hisham, “Shaykh Abu,” 5. 25. Hisham, “Shaykh Abu,” 6. 26. Ouazani, “Sale temps.” 27. Ministère de l’Intérieur, “Condensé d’Éléments,” 12. 28. Oshunkeye, “Big Hunt.” 29. Al-Ansari, “Message from Nigeria,” 19. 30. Aisha interview, 2019. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Wali, “Letter”; Agence France-Presse, “Kaduna Muslims”; Professor A discussion. 34. Said, “Some Feats,” 8. 35. BBC, “Al-Qaeda deputy.” 36. Institute for Defense Analyses, “Saddam and Terrorism,” 333. 37. Ibid.; Salem, Ben Laden, 53. 38. ICG, “Curbing Violence,” 23. 39. Wali, “Letter”; US Embassy Abuja, “Terrorist Arrest.” 40. Wali, “Letter”; Agence France-Presse, “Head of Islamic Charity”; Agence FrancePresse, “Kaduna Muslims.” 41. Agence France-Presse, “Head of Islamic Charity”; Vanguard, “Kano Police.” 42. Also known as the Department of State Services (DSS). 43. Vanguard, “Kano Police.” 44. Agence France-Presse, “Head of Islamic Charity.” 45. Ibid. 46. Hegghammer, “Saudis in Iraq,” footnote 2; Nsaibia, Twitter, January 13, 2017. 47. ICG, “Curbing Violence,” 23. 48. East African Standard, “Letter Could Sour.” 49. US Embassy Abuja, “Terrorist Arrest.” 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Vanguard, “Sufi Islamic Sect.” 53. Dumbe, Islamic Revivalism, 78–79; ICG, “Somalia’s Islamists,” 4. 54. ICG, “Somalia’s Islamists,” 4. 55. Kwandala, “Kwandala Foundation.” 56. Assalafiyya, “WA’AZI!WA’AZI!!WA’AZI.” 57. Oshunkeye, “Big Hunt.” 58. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 968. 59. The Australian, Matthew Stewart (Hamza al-Australi), was interviewed by al-Risalah magazine in 2015; Stewart, “Call from Usama,” 12. 60. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 241. 61. Ibid., 276–278, 969; US District Court, “Government’s Memorandum,” 7–8. 62. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 970. 63. Salem, Ben Laden, 54. 64. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 962. 65. Ogundele, “Suspect Admits Links.” 66. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 597, 1009. 67. Hisham, “Dear Brother,” 11. 68. Real name: Abd al-Rahman Ould Muhammad al-Husayn Ould Muhammad Salim. 69. Maaly, “Dialogue.”

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70. Lahoud, “Letters from Abbottabad,” 18. 71. CNN, “Rumsfeld.” 72. Arrested in Turkey in 2005; transferred to Guantanamo. 73. US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture,” 372. 74. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 195. 75. Ross and Rackmill, “Hunt for Osama.” 76. Arrested in Pakistan in 2005; transferred to Guantanamo. 77. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 1004; Burke, “Demise.” 78. For Rabia’s biography and photo with al-Zawahiri, see al-Adm, “Martyrs,” 96–99. 79. US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture,” 131. 80. Ibid., 373. 81. Associated Press, “Transcript of Osama.” 82. Omonobi, “Attacks.” 83. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 1007. 84. Vanguard, “FG Arraigns Nigerian Leader.” 85. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 795. 86. Reinares, Al-Qaeda’s Revenge, 88; al-Adm, “Martyrs,” 98. 87. Also known as Abu Talha al-Pakistani (incorrectly called “Talha and Nadeem” in Nigerian press reports). 88. US District Court, “Government’s Memorandum,” 7; Ayorinde, “Stirring Controversy”; BBC, “Al-Qaeda’s ‘Computer Expert’”; see also al-Adm, “Terrorism Industry,” 4:23. 89. Ayorinde, “Stirring Controversy.” 90. Neumann, Evans, and Pantucci, “Locating Al Qaeda’s Center,” 837. 91. US District Court, “Government’s Memorandum,” 9. 92. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 1015. 93. Ogundele, “Suspect Admits Links”; Omonobi, “Attacks.” 94. Diliberto, “Taranto”; US District Court v. Ibrahim, 52–60, 82–84. 95. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 201. 96. Ibid., 30. 97. Ibid., 708; US District Court, “Exhibit 23T.” 98. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 266–272. 99. US District Court, “Exhibit 23T”; Rabia’s codename was Tom; Harun’s was Spin[ghul]; Ashafa’s was Brother Ibrahim; and Nigeria’s was “your place.” 100. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 1009. 101. For Nabil Sahraoui’s writing, see A. I. Mustapha, “Word Should Be Said.” 102. Agence France-Presse, “Algerian Extremists.” 103. US Secretary of State, “Diplomatic Security.” 104. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 746. 105. US District Court, “Exhibit 23T.” 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid. 108. Ibid.; for “mobile bases,” see also Botha, “2007 Suicide Attacks,” 540. 109. Lahoud, “Letters from Abbottabad,” 39. 110. Ibid. 111. Ibid. 112. Ibid. 113. Reinares, Al-Qaeda’s Revenge, 88. 114. US District Court v. Ibrahim, 764. 115. Bergen, Osama, 311. 116. Idarat at-Tawahush in Arabic. 117. Naji, Administration of Savagery, 33, 43. 118. Hassan, Twitter. 119. Lahoud, “Beware of Imitators,” 23. 120. Billah, “Nigeria,” 65. 121. US District Court, “Exhibit 23T.”

4 Ideological Preparation for Jihad

While the Nigerian jihadist community’s emergence was influenced by foreign jihadist actors and support, it also relied on Nigerian Salafis for recruitment, networking, and ideological development. Nevertheless, Nigerian Islamic groups, and especially Salafis, were still influenced by geopolitics, including the rivalries between Saudi Arabia, Iran, and, to a lesser extent, Libya. Saudi Arabia represented Sunni Islam and Wahhabism, monarchism, the Arab world, and alliance with the United States while Iran represented Shiism, overthrowing monarchism, Persian power, and defying the United States (“Great Satan”). Whereas previous chapters concentrated on Muhammed Ali and global jihadism in Nigeria, this chapter details international and domestic factors that influenced Muhammed Yusuf’s ideology and Nigerian Salafi jihadism’s distinctive evolution, including the aversion to boko. Precursors of Jihadism in Nigeria Muhammed Yusuf participated in Nigerian Shia and then Salafi organizations, which rapidly expanded in Nigeria after 1979 as a result of Iranian and Saudi inspiration and patronage. Unlike Muhammed Ali, who visited Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and elsewhere, Yusuf was Nigerian born and bred. According to Yusuf’s son, Abu Musab, Yusuf’s father, a Sufi, fled his ancestral village near Lake Chad to escape “Western colonizers and their ideas,” thus explaining Yusuf’s childhood in Jakusko, Yobe.1 This was near where, at the time of Yusuf’s 1967 birth, one of West Africa’s most respected ascetic Sufi scholars, Shaikh Muhammad Gibrima of Nguru, resided in his life’s waning years. Because of their similar Kanuri ancestral origins, Yusuf’s family, like Gibrima, appended al-Daghiri to its surname.2

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Yusuf’s father was reportedly banished from his ancestral village because the emir learned he “preached against [boko].”3 However, Yusuf’s father’s reaction to disruptions occurring in postindependence Nigeria reflected how the Western-style Nigerian state was usurping traditional religious norms. Police formerly considered “agents of the colonial government,” for example, now enforced the law instead of imams, and then men, and increasingly women, studied “Western” subjects in universities, such as engineering, especially after Nigeria’s 1970s oil boom, instead of receiving traditional Islamic education.4 Indeed, Izala responded more effectively to these changes than other Nigerian Islamic groups, including Sufis, by offering Western education in Islamic frameworks, such as by segregating genders and teaching Arabic, including at Yakubu Musa’s school, and eventually establishing hisba as Islamic community police to enforce sharia. Yusuf’s father’s beliefs were, therefore, not unique and were inherited by Yusuf despite his eventually becoming Salafi. Around 1981, when Yusuf was fourteen years old, he moved to Yobe’s capital, Damatru, to study under two imams, but then moved to Maiduguri’s outskirts with his father, who received government pressure to enroll Yusuf in school.5 However, universal education was implemented ineffectively, and Yusuf continued Quranic studies under three Islamic teachers.6 He eventually took night classes at Maiduguri’s Kanemi Institute of Islamic Theology and acquired skill in preaching in his native Kanuri.7 After Yusuf’s 1981 arrival in Maiduguri, followers of Cameroonian preacher Muhammed Marwa, known as Maitatsine (“the one who curses”), retreated from Kano to Bulumkutu on Maiduguri’s outskirts. In 1980, Kano’s government had suppressed Maitatsine’s movement and killed him and several thousand followers.8 However, in Maiduguri, remaining disciples then reportedly came under the leadership of Maitatsine’s deputy, Mai Kalakato (“the mere man says”), whose alias referenced Maitatsine’s teaching that Prophet Muhammad was a “mere man” whose sayings and actions (hadith) derived from earthly, and not divine, origins. This buttressed Maitatsine’s 1979 claim that he himself was a prophet.9 The survivors of the 1980 Maitatsine crackdown in Kano were joined by other Maitatsine disciples “pardoned” by Shehu Shagari to “decongest the prisons.”10 They then relaunched the uprising in October 1982 in Kaduna and Bulumkutu, but they were decimated again by the security forces, and “hundreds of fanatics” were killed in Bulumkutu.11 Although reports suggest Yusuf’s father died in the 1980 Kano uprising, given his move to Maiduguri’s outskirts, he may actually have died in the 1982 uprising with Yusuf’s uncle, Maitatsine’s “senior commander,” who escaped to Maiduguri after the 1980 Kano crackdown.12 After his father’s death, Yusuf was supported by his father’s friend, wealthy Kanuri trader Alhaji Baba Fugu Mohammed, whose daughter

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became the first of Yusuf’s four wives.13 Yusuf’s father must have been influential enough that his preaching was taken seriously by his native village’s emir and later Fugu Mohammed. Moreover, if Yusuf’s father died in Kano in 1980, it seems he would not have forged close enough ties with Fugu Mohammed in Maiduguri that Fugu Mohammed would parent Yusuf in the 1980s. Yusuf also apparently inherited his father’s charisma and defiance of authority while benefiting from Fugu Mohammed’s patronage throughout his life. The prominent Nigerian Salafi scholar from Zaria, Kaduna State, Shaikh Albani,14 who knew Yusuf, recounted Yusuf’s father joining Maitatsine to “defend Islam.”15 Yusuf’s father, therefore, was among Nigerian Muslims who were “defending Islam” in the 1980s in response to MuslimChristian tensions and Nigerian Muslim rulers who allegedly were apathetic toward Islamic causes; promoted Christianity, such as when Shehu Shagari permitted the Pope and British archbishop to visit Kaduna and Kano in 1982, despite Muslim Students Society (MSS) protests; and “steered clear” of sharia to avoid religious polarization.16 Maitatsine would also have appealed to Yusuf’s father because Maitatsine, like Sufis, employed amulets to woo recruits and even political figures who believed Maitatsine had “supernatural powers.”17 Maitatsine further “behaved like a charismatic [Sufi] leader” and targeted Sufis for recruitment in the 1970s.18 One Maitatsine patron was Kano governor Abubakar Rimi, who hosted Maitatsine at Kano’s government house, paid for Maitatsine’s “services,” and prayed with Maitatsine before eventually ordering Maitatsine’s destruction in 1980.19 Although Maitatsine was banished by Kano’s emir (Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s grand-uncle) in the 1960s, he eventually returned to Nigeria and obtained approval from Nigerian Muslim authorities to perform hajj, which indicates he received some elite acceptance.20 However, Maitatsine’s extrajudicial killing by elites close to him presaged how Muhammed Ali, Muhammed Yusuf, and even Shaikh Jaafar would maintain fractious alliances with elites and be killed with at least some elite approval. When the 1982 Maiduguri clashes abated, Maitatsine’s movement was considered similar enough to mainstream Islam that a November 1982 CIA report called it a “revolutionary Islamic group” that was “sometimes referred to as [Izala].”21 The Sufi-leaning Borno government’s November 1982 white paper on the Maiduguri clashes also recommended banning both Maitatsine and Izala because Izala’s “slanderous preaching habits,” including declaring takfir on Sufis, had a “[Mai]tatsineism anchor.”22 However, Nigeria’s most prominent Salafi, Abubakar Gumi, blamed Maiduguri’s unrest on “mallams [scholars] whose main preoccupation is obsession with the Quran to the exclusion of everything else.”23 Gumi referred to Maitatsine’s “Quran only” doctrine that rejected any source of sharia besides the Quran. In addition, Maitatsine prohibited anything perceived as Western, including watches,

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radios, bicycles, and buttons, and “criticize[d] the corruption and ostentation of Nigeria’s elites and the effects of Western technology and education on Nigerian society.”24 Yusuf’s preaching later resembled Maitatsine’s in opposing Westernization, but Yusuf accepted Western technologies, as did Izala, and Yusuf never criticized elites’ wealth or income disparities between rich and poor; he instead lamented the loss of Muslim power and elites’ refusal to implement full sharia. Moreover, Yusuf viewed the Quran and hadith as divine. This aligned him with mainstream Islam more than with Maitatsine, who was posthumously understood as heterodox, if not outright heretical, and unconventional even compared to colonial-era Central Saharan mahdists who arose in response to perceived existential threats to Islam from Western powers. Maitatsine’s enmeshment in northern Nigeria’s Muslim milieu involved overlapping with Sufis and Izala, and being admired by MSS for “moral courage,” but not for his religious practices.25 Additionally, Maitatsine overlapped with Nigerian Shias. For example, he declared his prophethood months after an IUM-affiliated Dar al-Hadith (Institute of Hadith) alumnus, Juhayman al-Utaybi, claimed to be a mahdi and sieged Mecca with followers. Coinciding with Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, this raised Saudi suspicions about Shias’ attempting to control Islam’s holiest sites.26 Similar to al-Utaybi and Maitatsine, Nigeria’s Shia community, which was small before 1979 but grew to four million in ensuing decades, also had a “somewhat millenarian reading” of a hadith about God sending a mujaddid (renewer of the faith) at every century’s end to wage jihad “identical to that of Usman dan Fodio.” Moreover, 1978 was the final year of the fourteenthcentury hijri (Islamic lunar calendar).27 Thus, Maitatsine’s prophethood declaration aligned with this Nigerian Shia belief while Maitatsine’s followers reportedly also carried placards of Ayatollah Khomeini and Muammar Qaddafi, who they considered to be mujaddids.28 Nearly three decades after Maitatsine’s death, Yusuf, like Maitatsine, was also viewed by followers as a messiah and mujaddid even though Yusuf and his deputy, Shekau, explicitly distinguished themselves from Maitatsine by affirming their reliance on established Salafi canon.29 Nonetheless, Yusuf’s followers’ veneration of him resembled Maitatsine’s followers. Also ironic was that Abubakar Rimi, who suppressed Maitatsine’s movement in Kano in 1980, was the second “Libyan connection” the CIA identified in 1978, along with Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, and was considered “personally close” to Muammar Qaddafi.30 Maitatsine’s 1980 uprising commenced days after Libya-backed Chadian rebels entered N’Djamena, Chad’s capital, and proceeded toward Borno’s borders. This caused Nigerian troops to repel the Chadians and Nigerian officials to label Maitatsine a “Libyan-backed insurrection” and expel Libyan diplomats, although no evidence was found to prove their responsibility for Maitatsine’s uprising.31

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The timing of the rebels’ N’Djamena incursion and Maitatsine’s uprising and Maitatsine’s associations with Shiism, if not also Libya, were rumored to have provoked Saudi Arabia to send a “pilgrimage airplane” to Kano and somehow push Kano’s government to suppress Maitatsine.32 This contributed to the sense at the time that Maitatsine’s 1980 uprising was a Kano affair, but there may have been broader geopolitical dimensions. In 1980, Libya was Saudi Arabia’s main African rival and was, according to the CIA, already backing heterodox Nigerian Ahmadiyyas, who believed a nineteenth-century British Indian was a Muslim mahdi.33 Libya was also reportedly backing other marginalized West African Muslim ethnic groups, such as Tuareg rebels in Niger and Mali, and antiWestern militant-politicians. 34 The latter included Liberia’s Samuel Doe (and then Charles Taylor) and eventually Sierra Leone’s Foday Sankoh, if not also coup-makers Jerry Rawlings in Ghana and Saye Zerbo in Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), as well as Niger Delta–based ethnic ethnic Ijaw secessionists who, with Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, later disrupted Nigeria’s oil supply. 35 Libya was also attempting to “develop contacts” at elite northern Nigerian universities, although not all beneficiaries, including Shaikh Albani, who received his 1985 Bayero University Kano (BUK) master’s degree in Islamic studies through a Libyan grant, lost their autonomy. 36 On the contrary, as mentioned in Chapter 6, Shaikh Albani was distinctly aware of the dangers of Islamic preachers’ relying on foreign backing by the time of Shaikh Jaafar’s 2007 assassination. Nevertheless, as a result of Libya’s activities, suspicions that Libya was indirectly backing or influencing Maitatsine, among other “alienated” or “idiosyncratic” Africans like Qaddafi himself, whose “Green Book” resembled Maitatsine’s edited “personal Quran,” to create a Libya-ruled “trans-Saharan state” might not have been far-fetched. 37 For example, Libya’s Kano-born ambassador could have provided funds to Maitatsine’s patron and the “Libyan connection” Abubakar Rimi. Considering leading Nigerian politicians rebuffed Qaddafi’s entreaties, including Shehu Shagari, and viewed Qaddafi as “patronizing” toward African states and a Nigerian competitor, if Libya were not interfering in the “Giant of Africa” through lower tier politicians, including Rimi and “radicals” in his political party and Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, it would have been inconsistent with Libya’s overarching foreign policy in West Africa.38 The final straw before the 1980 Maitatsine crackdown, however, was Maitatsine’s appropriating mosques in Fagge, Kano, and claiming his divine right to preside over them.39 Fagge was outside Kano’s Sufi-dominated birni (center) and where Kano Salafis, including the young Shaikh Jaafar and more senior Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, were based, although Datti Ahmed’s radicalism “disaffected” him from northern Nigerian—and Saudi-backed— “king-makers” like Abubakar Gumi.40 Maitatsine’s influence, therefore,

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unsettled too many powerful political and religious figures so that his annihilation became the consensus response. Similar intrigues and elite responses to Maitatsine resurfaced before Kanama camp’s destruction, Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination, Muhammed Yusuf’s death, and Nigerian Shia leader Ibrahim al-Zakzaky’s near death, as discussed in subsequent chapters. Islam and the Nigerian State By 1990, Maitatsine’s movement was a vestige of the past decade even though his disciples rebelled until 1985 and the Maitatsine offshoot group Kalakato established isolated communities into the 2000s. Izala established that Maitatsine’s teachings were kufr (infidelity) and shirk (polytheistic). Moreover, Maitatsine’s recruits from city outskirts were now proselytized by Salafis and Shias, whose teachings were legitimized by Saudi Salafi and Iranian Shia scholars and other Sunni dawa groups, including Hudaibiyyah,41 which received funding from its founders in Kano and their colleagues in the United States, Britain, and Saudi Arabia to convert northern Nigeria’s remaining “pagans” and Christians to Islam.42 The first group Muhammed Yusuf joined after completing his Islamic studies in Maiduguri was Ibrahim al-Zakzaky’s Shia movement.43 Born in Zaria in 1953, al-Zakzaky was ABU’s MSS leader with, among others, future prominent Izala scholar Bashir Aliyu Umar. They were both involved in destroying a Marxist-leaning faculty wine-drinkers’ club after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and sponsored to travel to Iran, where Umar led delegates meeting Ayatollah Khomeini.44 However, Umar was recruited by IUM and became a self-described “product of the Saudi religious educational system” and respected Salafi scholar.45 In contrast, al-Zakzaky was imprisoned off and on for nine years in the 1980s and 1990s, including with his wife and children, for antigovernment “subversive activities,” such as declaring, “there is no government except that of Islam.”46 Although al-Zakzaky viewed prison as a “spiritual training ground,” some of his followers suffered from overcrowding and tuberculosis and died in prison in the 1990s.47 Al-Zakzaky’s 1980 Funtua Declaration,48 presented to his pro-Iran MSS faction and later disseminated at various university campuses, reflected his ideology. He argued Nigerians succumbed to their own “injustice and exploitation” by supporting governments that were not “operating under Allah’s rules”; affirmed he had “no loyalty to [Nigeria’s] Constitution, its laws and leaders” and only “faith in Allah, His laws, and the leadership of Allah’s Messenger”; and claimed Usman dan Fodio’s jihad strengthened Islam but “corrupt emirs contaminated what Dan Fodio established,” just like Western colonists did.49 Al-Zakzaky went so far as to assert that Nigerian Muslims were living in a state of jahiliya (pre-Islamic ignorance) and infidelity and that “there was no Islam in Nigeria.”50 More

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than three decades later, Abubakar Shekau would make similar claims, except Shekau considered only his own followers to be Muslims. AlZakzaky’s ideology, therefore, transcended Shiism and underpinned the future dawa of Yusuf, Shekau, and Yusuf’s third-in-command, Mamman Nur, despite their reconstituting al-Zakzaky’s ideas in Salafi-jihadi frameworks. The “mujaddid” Ayatollah Khomeini’s coming to power in Iran in 1979, moreover, seems to have inspired al-Zakzaky’s followers in similar ways as Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s June 2014 caliphate declaration inspired Boko Haram, including Shekau. Al-Zakzaky’s promoting slogans of “Down with the Nigerian Constitution” and “Islam only” embodied a form of Islamic revolutionary activism that also irritated Izala by exposing its leaders’ alignment with northern Nigerian elite interests instead of agitating for overthrowing, or withdrawing from, Nigeria’s un-Islamic institutions.51 For example, US officials in the 1980s viewed Abubakar Gumi as an “Islamic purist” who prioritized Islam over nationalism, but he was still a “political moderate.”52 Unlike alZakzaky, Gumi, who acquired his theological education in Sudan during the British colonial era, adopted Ahmadu Bello– and Muslim Brotherhood– style strategies demanding Muslims Islamize preexisting Nigerian institutions while “acting as a brake on aggressive radical movements.”53 He, for example, disparaged “young boys” in al-Zakzaky’s MSS faction after the Kafanchan clashes and distanced himself from “radicals” like Ibrahim Datti Ahmed.54 This explains why Muhammed Yusuf was initially more attracted to al-Zakzaky and later Datti Ahmed, whose rebelliousness mirrored his father’s, than to Gumi and Izala scholars who accommodated the state and accepted its fundamental legitimacy. In 1991, when Yusuf had recently arrived in Kano and Kaduna to sell Islamic caps and study under al-Zakzaky’s followers, al-Zakzaky’s movement burned down a Katsina newspaper’s office for publishing comics implying Mary Magdalene was a prostitute and Prophet Muhammad “made love to a woman of easy virtue.”55 However, al-Zakzaky’s Katsina-born deputy Yakubu Yahaya, who joined al-Zakzaky while studying at BUK in 1984 and was later ejected from Katsina Arabic Teachers’ College for stating that Nigeria’s flag “erodes the faith of Muslims in Islam,” assured the public they were only “fighting a government of infidels.”56 In addition, like Ayatollah Khomeini, who knew Iran could never become a global power if it emphasized Shia identity despite 90 percent of Muslims worldwide being Sunnis, Yahaya asserted al-Zakzaky’s group represented “only Islam” and said, “We are not Shiite. We are Muslims. . . . It is the Jews who always divide the Muslims into groups.”57 Yahaya also reportedly threatened to kill Katsina’s military governor after one al-Zakzaky follower was killed during the suppression of Yahaya’s Katsina protest.58 One decade later, in 2002, Yahaya also declared that voting was “endorsing kufr” and tantamount to

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“paying allegiance to the system,” which Muhammed Yusuf also advocated at that time, albeit as a Salafi.59 Considering Yusuf had primarily a Sufi religious education before following al-Zakzaky, his adoption of uncompromising positions against not only Western education but also blasphemy, Nigeria’s Constitution, Nigerian symbols, and especially the Nigerian state and its Muslim rulers may have been rooted more in his exposure to Nigerian Shia revolutionary discourses than either the Sufis who he followed before al-Zakzaky or the Salafis who he followed after al-Zakzaky. After years observing al-Zakzaky’s fervent antistate theology and actions, al-Zakzaky’s disciples, including Yusuf, felt betrayed when alZakzaky finally affirmed his Shiism in 1994. This involved his praying like Shias; celebrating Shia holidays, such as Ashura; and commemorating Iranian holidays, such as Ayatollah Khomeini’s birthday, the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday (mawlid), and Quds [Jerusalem] Day.60 Al-Zakzaky then adopted the new name Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) for his following, which nevertheless avoided “Shiism” in branding. In the 1980s, it would not have been especially controversial for Muslims to shift between Sunni and Shia affiliations or between either of those two denominations and Sufism or “Maitatsineism” because they shared similar characteristics. Maitatsine and Salafis, for example, declared takfir on others, Maitatsine and Sufis used amulets, and Maitatsine and Shias awaited the mujaddid. However, Sunni to Shia conversions progressively became tantamount to apostasy after Juhayman al-Utaybi’s 1979 Mecca siege, the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq war in which Saudi Arabia bankrolled “Sunni” Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s 1991 suppression of Shia uprisings in Shiism’s holy city of Karbala, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia’s cutting ties with Iran from 1988 to 1991. Moreover, Iran’s support for the secular Arab nationalist (Ba‘athist) Syrian government’s suppression of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s demonstrated to young Sunnis, including Bashir Aliyu Umar, that Iran was more committed to “Persian hegemony” and geopolitical alliances than the “unity of Islam” that Ayatollah Khomeini purported to promote.61 These historical events, therefore, exacerbated differences between Sunnis, especially Salafis, and Shias internationally such that by 1994 al-Zakzaky’s Shiism was rejected by Nigerian Sunnis, including Yusuf, who admired alZakzaky’s antigovernment agitation but were unwilling to become Shia converts. As Abu Musab later wrote, al-Zakzaky was an “apostate rejecter” (al-murtad al-rafidhi),62 who “in the guise of reforming (al-Islah)” Islam engaged in “dissimulation” (taqiya) to deceive youths with slogans against the United States, Jews, and the “infidel” Nigerian government. However, once Muhammed Yusuf noticed al-Zakzaky’s “signs of Iranian Shia rejectionism” in 1994, Yusuf “became close to” (qaraba) Izala scholars, who followed “shaikhs of the Arabian Peninsula,” who are “severe” (mushadadin) against “grave worshippers (Sufis).” Despite having a “good reputation” and “occu-

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pying a high position,” Yusuf still “separated” (infasala) from Izala in 2002 when its scholars opposed Yusuf’s call not to “ally with and enter [Nigeria’s] democratic government.”63 There were also numerous cases where prominent Muslims switched from pro-Iran or pro-Shia leanings back to Sunni Islam, including not only Bashir Aliyu Umar but also Hudaibiyyah founder Muzzamil Sani Hanga and Muhammed Yusuf. Like Umar, for example, Hanga visited Iran after the Islamic Revolution and later hosted at MSS’s pro-Iran faction prominent Muslims to discuss “suitable models” for Nigerian “Muslim revolutionaries.” These guests included Ayatollah Khomeini’s director of youth organizations and future Sudanese prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi.64 While the former was obviously Shia, the latter was Hassan al-Turabi’s brother-inlaw, the great-grandson of legendary nineteenth-century anti-British Sudanese mahdist Muhammed Ahmad, and a promoter of mahdism as the “synthesis between the Sunni, Shia, and Sufi schools of thought.”65 Hanga, too, believed a mujaddid would “restore order” after the 1980 Maitatsine clashes, but Hanga later stopped supporting Iran and, like Abubakar Gumi, espoused “accommodation, at least temporarily, with the secular state” and “gradual ways” of changing it.66 After al-Zakzaky’s announcement of his Shiism, some disaffected followers split and formed Jamaat Tajdid al-Islami (Movement for Islamic Revival, JTI), including al-Zakzaky’s reported highest-ranking follower from Yobe, Muhammed Yusuf, who became JTI’s Borno representative.67 JTI remained committed to the “revolutionary process of Islamization” and to reviving Usman dan Fodio’s legacy like al-Zakzaky, but it was “faithful to Sunni orthodoxy,” especially the Muslim Brotherhood’s model, and opposed Shia theology.68 While championing JTI’s Islamic credentials, some members, but reportedly not Yusuf, removed from prison and beheaded a Kano Christian accused of blasphemy for using Quran pages as tissue paper in 1994.69 Arrests of JTI leaders following this incident, controversial JTI leaflets demanding Christians leave Kano, and other JTI threats to harm Muslim leaders who “collaborate” with Kano Christians in 1995, however, caused JTI’s leaders to engage in “self-assessment.”70 They then moderated, accommodated the state, adopted a policy of “Reform from Within,” and abandoned viewing Western education and government service as haram.71 After JTI’s sea change, al-Zakzaky, too, gradually moderated his antistate rhetoric in response to other pressures. Besides Hudaibiyyah founders’ and JTI’s breaking from al-Zakzaky, two other Nigerian Shia factions emerged in the 1990s. Iran supported Darul Thaqalayn,72 which was less politically active than al-Zakzaky and helped Iran avoid foreign relations problems with Nigeria that had existed since Iranian diplomats were expelled from Nigeria on suspicions of influencing the 1982 Maiduguri clashes.73 Nevertheless, one Darul Thaqalayn director was fired in the mid-1990s for

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being a closeted Kalakato member, indicating there was latent overlap between Maitatsineism and Nigerian Shiism.74 Another Shia group, the Rasulul A‘azam Foundation, later split from Darul Thaqalayn over concerns about the latter’s Iranian managers and claimed to receive greater theological support from Iranian ayatollahs than alZakzaky.75 Challenged by JTI, Shia factions, and anti-Shia Salafis like Shaikh Albani, especially after the 2003 US war in Iraq and the 2011 Syrian war further exacerbated Sunni-Shia tensions, al-Zakzaky recognized he could not overthrow the state and with few allies he was vulnerable to government crackdowns.76 This explains why al-Zakzaky tempered demands for the Nigerian government’s overthrow, adopted JTI– and Hudaibiyyah-like calls for “Islamic Evolution” (not “Revolution”), permitted followers to serve in certain civil service positions, and focused on public Shia and pro-Iran demonstrations.77 Furthermore, Yakubu Yahaya moderated and diverted energies away from Nigeria and toward external enemies. For example, in 2012, he burned French, American, and Israeli flags and condemned Charlie Hebdo’s satirical cartoons of Prophet Muhammad and a Coptic Egyptian American’s film, Innocence of Muslims, which mocked Prophet Muhammad.78 However, he caused much less commotion than the Tunisians and Libyans who attacked US diplomatic facilities in Tunis and Benghazi, purportedly in response to Innocence of Muslims’ release on YouTube and Abu Yahya al-Libi’s death in US drone strikes in Pakistan. Nevertheless, after a war of words in which al-Zakzaky accused Abubakar Gumi’s son, the Saudi Arabia–based Salafi scholar Ahmad Gumi, of “working for Israel” and Ahmad Gumi warned al-Zakzaky about “blocking public roads” during Shia processions, Nigeria’s security forces killed hundreds of al-Zakzaky’s followers, including al-Zakzaky’s son, and detained al-Zakzaky indefinitely with his wife while his followers blocked public roads during Shia processions in 2015.79 Yakubu Yahaya became acting IMN leader in al-Zakzaky’s place, but still asserted that “establishing [an Islamic] government is a secondary issue” and “power struggle” was not the group’s aim.80 He also disavowed “armed struggle” and advocated establishing an Islamic state through “enlightenment” and resumed courtesy visits to Christians and Katsina’s traditional emir.81 Al-Zakzaky’s case, like Maitatsine’s decades earlier and Muhammed Yusuf’s in 2009, demonstrated how being in the state’s and Muslim establishment’s crosshairs while being influential and lacking allies created the risk of facing government annihilation. According to Abu Aisha, during Yusuf’s 1990s stint in Kano’s Islamic milieu under al-Zakzaky’s influence, Yusuf decided jihad was the solution for Nigerian Muslims.82 However, in a 2008 sermon Yusuf acknowledged that he witnessed al-Zakzaky’s “drift towards Shiism” and JTI’s “drift towards democracy,” which were both “not Islam.”83 Yusuf thus understood

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how idealistic Islamic movements could deviate from founding goals under pressure from the state, factionalism, and the Muslim establishment. Shaikh Albani recalled that Yusuf, described as a principal officer in al-Zakzaky’s movement, became disaffected when he saw al-Zakzaky become “all talk and no action.”84 As Yusuf felt betrayed by al-Zakzaky and JTI, he shifted toward Izala, whose own 1990s factionalization enabled the rise of a scholar Yusuf believed would not accommodate the state: Shaikh Jaafar. Salafi Factionalism in Nigeria The IUM commenced recruitment dawras (tours) in Nigeria in 1981 when Bashir Aliyu Umar, among others, was offered a scholarship, although Umar did not study in Medina until 1986. In 1989, the Saudi scholar and official from Baljurashi, south of Mecca, who supervised Nigeria’s dawra, Shaikh Muhammed bin Abdullah Ahmed Zarban al-Ghamidi (Shaikh Zarban), recruited Shaikh Jaafar, who was then known as Jaafar Katsina.85 Shaikh Jaafar’s admission reflected his success in Quranic recitation competitions in Sokoto and Mecca, under the tutelage of Kano-based Islamic scholars and an Egyptian al-Azhar University graduate working in Kano’s Egyptian Cultural Center.86 Shaikh Jaafar thus demonstrated worthiness of admission despite lacking certain IUM prerequisites. Shaikh Zarban consequently became Shaikh Jaafar’s mentor because he helped the once underprivileged almajiri student enter the world’s premiere Islamic university. This became the “decisive moment” of Shaikh Jaafar’s life and resulted in his becoming a shaikh (spiritual leader) four years later when he returned to Kano.87 During Shaikh Jaafar’s 1989–1993 IUM studies, Shaikh Zarban mediated between rival Izala factions in Nigeria.88 As early as the 1970s, the CIA estimated Saudi Arabia provided $36 million89 annually to Abubakar Gumi for promoting Salafism in Nigeria. This continued after Izala’s 1978 founding and the 1981 dawras, and it countered Iranian influence, which the Saudis began to perceive as a greater threat in Africa than Libyan influence.90 Like Maitatsine, Gumi and Izala scholars notoriously declared takfir on Sufis and others, including Ahmadiyyas, who at Gumi’s urging were banned from hajj and relegated to second-class status.91 However, by 1991, one year before Gumi’s death, Gumi reconciled with Nigerian Sufi leaders, including Nasiru Kabara of Kano, Dahiru Bauchi of Bauchi, and Ibrahim Saleh of Maiduguri, after mediation by, among others, the formerly proIran lawyer, Muzzamil Sani Hanga, and another Kano-based businessman who once accused Gumi of being too close to Ibrahim Babangida.92 Although Babangida originally aligned with Sufis, especially Ibrahim Saleh, he needed broader Muslim backing to avoid ever having to leave office, which explains his outreach to Salafis like Gumi, even though Babangida was still ousted in 1993.93 As for Gumi, his reconciliation with

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Sufis stemmed from the need for Muslim solidarity after the Kafanchan clashes and was a response to rising northern Nigerian Christian political influence, inevitable Christian opposition to sharia, and a 1990 failed coup attempt against Babangida. If successful, the coup could have excised northern Nigeria, preserved oil wealth for southern Christians, and led to Gumi’s assassination like the 1966 coup leading to Ahmadu Bello’s assassination and majority Igbo Biafra’s short-lived secession attempt.94 Throughout the 1980s, Sufism also proved too steeped in Nigerian religious tradition for Salafism to overcome, and Sufis, especially Dahiru Bauchi, began aggressively countering Gumi’s theology. Dahiru Bauchi, Nasiru Kabara, and Ibrahim Saleh also courted Iranian, Libyan, and Moroccan support, respectively, to compete with Salafis.95 Izala suffered further setbacks when two preachers who defected to al-Zakzaky’s movement took over an Izala mosque in Sokoto.96 Thus, Salafi accommodation, rather than rivalry, with Sufis secured Sunni Muslim political power visà-vis Christians and Shias. However, accommodating Sufis after decades of opposing them caused Izala’s official founder and Gumi’s former student, Ismail Idris, to form a new faction that still called Sufis “infidels.”97 Idris’s faction also favored Saudi Arabia after it allied with the United States during the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War because Idris considered secular Arab nationalist (Ba‘athist) Saddam Hussein to be an infidel.98 Idris’s faction became known as Izala’s Jos faction because Idris was from Jos, or the Bush faction because Idris was perceived as supporting US President George H. W. Bush. Others called it Izala A, however, because it represented the original Izala. In contrast, another Izala faction that followed in Gumi’s footsteps was led by Abdullahi Saleh (“Dr. Pakistan”). He was recruited to IUM in the 1981 dawra and then studied at Islamabad’s International Islamic University and worked for Pakistan-based MWL, which assisted Afghan refugees. He, therefore, fits the profile of the Nigerian scholar whom Abdullah Azzam’s Algerian son-in-law recalled meeting at Peshawar madrassas in 1989 just before Dr. Pakistan’s return to Nigeria.99 Dr. Pakistan’s faction employed a wider historical breadth of Wahhabi canon than Idris’s faction and avoided declaring takfir on Sufis or Saddam Hussein.100 Like the ABU graduate who went on hajj in 1991, mentioned in Chapter 2, Dr. Pakistan’s faction also feared US troops in Saudi Arabia would cause fasad (depravity).101 Therefore, Dr. Pakistan’s faction was called Izala’s Kaduna faction because Dr. Pakistan and like-minded scholars preached there, but also the Saddam faction because it was perceived as supporting Iraq. Others, however, called it Izala B in juxtaposition to Izala A. The Kaduna faction alleged Idris was bribed by Saudi ally Kuwait, which was under Iraqi occupation. However, the Jos faction countered that Kaduna faction chairman, Yakubu Musa, was enriching himself through

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funding from Islamic charities and that the Kaduna faction was ignoring both Wahhabi and long-standing Nigerian Islamic scholars’ prohibitions on political participation by allying with Sufis to win elections.102 Shaikh Jaafar’s confidant in Kano, Shaikh Ibrahim Khalil, for example, described politics as “a game . . . the ulama used to stay away from” while Sufi ascetics in Shaikh Muhammad Gibrima’s heyday, including his disciples, viewed interacting with wealthy men and powerful politicians as contemptible.103 However, this changed with the politico-religious activism of Izala, alZakzaky, and other Islamist groups that eventually caused Sufis to wade into politics to counterbalance them. With tensions between Izala factions rising and Abubakar Gumi unable to reunite them, assistance was requested from elsewhere. This was when Shaikh Zarban conducted his mediation. Shaikh Zarban chaired his mediations in 1991 at Abubakar Gumi’s Sultan Bello mosque in Kaduna. He concluded that the Jos faction “craved leadership” (hub al-riyaasa) while the Kaduna faction “craved money” (hub al-maal).104 He may have resolved tensions, between the theologically more sophisticated Kaduna faction scholars who opposed Saudi foreign policy and the theologically cruder Jos faction scholars who favored Saudi foreign policy, by “using a divide and rule tactic to polarize [Izala] in order have stronger control over it,” according to two professors in Kano.105 Therefore, when Shaikh Jaafar returned to Kano in 1993, Shaikh Zarban may have overseen Shaikh Jaafar’s formation of Izala’s new subgroup, Ahlussunnah, or Izala C. After Shaikh Jaafar formed Ahlussunnah, Shaikh Zarban was again in Nigeria in 1994 conducting the dawra with Umar Fallata (Fulani), who was born in Mecca to Malian parents from colonial-era Nigeria. He also became IUM’s secretary-general and Dar al-Hadith director. Among other visitors that year, Yakubu Musa received the Algerian GIA member Hassan Allane; Niger’s Hamid Algabid, who was the OIC secretary-general and 1992 King Faisal Prize recipient; and Shaikh Zarban and Fallata.106 Shaikh Zarban and Fallata then attended a meeting in Kano with Salafis and Sufis hosted by the Dawa Group’s Aminudeen Abubakar.107 Like Shaikh Jaafar, Aminudeen Abubakar studied at Kano’s Egyptian Cultural Center, whose Egyptian officers were suspected by the United States of amplifying the Muslim Brotherhood in Kano in the 1970s.108 Abubakar later became influenced by Muslim Brotherhood literature and was ideologically aligned with al-Zakzaky, whose followers were called Muslim Brothers before 1994. Abubakar also became a pro-Iran MSS leader after Iran’s Islamic Revolution.109 However, after meeting Abubakar Gumi and receiving Saudi and Kuwaiti funding, Abubakar began leading MSS’s pro-Saudi faction and founded the Salafi-oriented Dawa Group in 1982.110 Abubakar eventually conformed to Saudi foreign policy preferences and became anti-Iran; joined “the Kano establishment [and] adopted a relatively

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moderate stance” toward Sufis, especially because of Gumi’s reconciliation with Sufis and because Nasiru Kabara was his former teacher; and maintained “privileged connections” with Saudi Arabia.111 Considering Saudi Arabia’s record of “local countermoves” to promote Saudi foreign policy through financial and theological influence over Nigerian Salafi scholars, including Abubakar Gumi, Aminudeen Abubakar, and Bashir Aliyu Umar, and organizations like Izala and the Dawa Group, it would not have been atypical if Shaikh Zarban also facilitated Shaikh Jaafar’s formation of Ahlussunnah as an alternative to Izala’s other factions.112 Ahlussunnah was theologically sophisticated like Izala’s Kaduna faction, but it was more internationalist and pan-Islamism-oriented than the Kaduna faction. It also attempted to eschew identifying publicly with Izala because of Izala’s negative reputation from scholars’ declaring takfir on Sufis. Ahlussunnah further rejected Izala’s distinctly Nigerian orientation, bureaucratic organizational structure, and hierarchies. This was, therefore, similar to Isa Ali Pantami and Shaikh Albani, who both preached without organizational affiliation, and al-Zakzaky’s IMN, which rejected “hierarchical structure,” except for the leader and “eminent shaikh al-Zakzaky,” and the appellation “Shia” in favor of “Islamic.”113 Shaikh Jaafar’s pan-Islamism was exemplified by his promoting “emotional solidarity with Muslims everywhere,” and combining references to Muslim “wars of national liberation” with Wahhabi preaching.114 Another Ahlussunnah scholar close to Shaikh Jaafar, Ibrahim Jalo Jalingo, was recruited to IUM in the 1989 dawra; was a business partner of Shaikh Jaafar’s confidant Ibrahim Khalil when Jalingo was in Medina and Khalil was in Kano; and was among the Nigerian IUM students “counseled” by Shaikh Zarban.115 Jalingo also wrote literature between 1996 and 1999 that typified Ahlussunnah’s worldview. He, for example, elegized Umar Fallata, who died in 1999; praised Shaikh Zarban, Abubakar Gumi, Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Abd al-Aziz bin Baz, “Muslim Brothers in Afghanistan,” and Saudi Arabia’s “spreading Islam around the world”; and lamented the “Islamic world being in [Western] hands” and Maiduguri Sufis’ still “condemning” Salafis.116 Jalingo also attempted to mediate between Abubakar Gumi and Ismail Idris in 1990 but was scolded by Idris and commended by Gumi.117 Therefore, the primarily Kano-based Ahlussunnah was characterized by maintaining close ties to Shaikh Zarban, Saudi Salafi scholars, Medina-based Nigerian IUM students, and being a more reliable and faithful Saudi partner than both other Izala factions.118 Domestically, Shaikh Jaafar also received patronage from a wealthy Izala businessman in Kano who funded a mosque there, where Shaikh Jaafar, Bashir Aliyu Umar, and another 1981 IUM dawra recruit and former Egyptian Cultural Center student, the Togolese Abdulwahhab Abdullah, preached until Shaikh Jaafar relocated to Kano’s al-Muntada Mosque after

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2002. During this 1994–2002 period, Shaikh Jaafar distinguished himself by preaching more eloquently than his peers despite his lesser academic qualifications—he never completed graduate studies in Khartoum and later Sokoto. Shaikh Jaafar’s recognition that the OIC, Arab League, and other international Islamic institutions never prevented the “collective tragedy of Muslims around the globe” likely also catalyzed his involvement in Muhammed Ali’s Khartoum-related jihadist activities or at least inspiring Ali’s followers while aiming to defend Muslims in Nigeria and enrolling himself in Khartoum’s International University of Africa.119 In the mid-1990s, Bin Laden’s deputies also engaged in debates about al-Qaeda’s identity. The winning side concluded al-Qaeda was not a broadbased Muslim organization, which Bin Laden initially envisioned, but that it was a Salafi organization that would ally specifically with Salafis to defend Muslims globally.120 However, this led to strategic dilemmas because, for example, Afghan Taliban members still had Sufi tendencies, including “tomb worship” (ibadat al-qubr), and most Somali elders whose support al-Qaeda needed were Sufi.121 Nevertheless, some Ahlussunnah preachers were, therefore, not only networking, but also theologically aligned, with mid-1990s disciples of Bin Laden. Before al-Qaeda’s August 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Bin Laden was still known internationally as a “fugitive Saudi financier,” and not al-Qaeda leader, including to US officials, such as deputy counselor for political affairs in Pakistan and future US special envoy for countering Boko Haram Dan Mozena.122 Until August 1998, Bin Laden had only sponsored international operations targeting the United States in Aden, Yemen, in 1992, and Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, the former killing two non-Americans and the latter supporting Somali militant-politician Mohamed Aidid’s fighters. These operations were in addition to Bin Laden’s wellknown animus toward Saudi Arabia and the United States and his funding of Islamist militants in, among other places, Algeria, including the GIA, and Somalia, including fighters with Afghanistan-trained Salafi youth leader Aden Ayro, who eventually became al-Shabaab’s first leader in 2006.123 Despite Bin Laden’s activities, even after al-Qaeda’s bombings at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, academics studying terrorism still used the term “the Bin Laden Network” to refer to al-Qaeda until 9/11, when the group’s self-given name from late-1980s Afghanistan, al-Qaeda (“the base [of jihad]”) became popularized globally.124 Therefore, ties developed between Ahlussunnah preachers, Muhammed Ali, and donors to Ali’s jihadist project—who were connected to Bin Laden before August 1998—would have been less nefarious than ties after August 1998 or especially 9/11. Ahlussunnah preachers, as well as US officials and academics, would have viewed Ali in the mid-1990s not as being tied to “al-Qaeda” in the post-9/11 sense, but rather to Bin Laden and his fellow jihadist financiers and trainers.

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In addition to their mutual Salafi theology, Ahlussunnah and Bin Laden’s Khartoum-based network in the mid-1990s also self-identified as vanguards with transnational orientations and were concerned about defending Muslims from Western encroachment, even though only Ahlussunnah remained faithful to Saudi Arabia.125 Shaikh Jaafar and other Ahlussunnah preachers would have viewed contributors to Nigeria’s emerging jihadist community like Hassan Allane and Muhammed Ali as forming a potentially beneficial military wing to defend Muslims in Nigeria, while Ahlussunnah was the preaching wing. Bin Laden’s Khartoum-based funding network and Islamic charities were donors to that military wing. Salafi scholars who were aware of Muhammed Ali’s activities, including Shaikh Jaafar, might not have begun appreciating the dangers of global jihadism until the period from August 1998 to May 2003, as discussed in Chapter 5. New Alliances and Enemies Shaikh Jaafar led Ahlussunnah’s network of preachers with Izala Kaduna faction’s Yakubu Musa and loosely Izala-affiliated Ibrahim Datti Ahmed. They were all outspoken on sharia affairs, and Shaikh Jaafar and Datti Ahmed combined Quranic tafsir (interpretation) with discussion of religiopolitical affairs, which differed from traditional tafsir and increased tensions with Sufi scholars.126 Musa also advocated for “the moral re-alignment of civil society” and led vigilantes to pressure Katsina governor and future president Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to implement sharia, and to raid bars and Christian-run hotels allegedly allowing prostitution, reminiscent of the Kafanchan clashes.127 Like the Afghan Taliban, Musa also attempted to prohibit traditional musical instruments that he deemed to violate sharia.128 Datti Ahmed also earned the nickname “doctor-mullah” when, despite his medical degree, he opposed Muslims’ receiving polio vaccinations because Western countries allegedly tainted them to cause infertility and reduce Nigeria’s Muslim population. However, Muslim critics suspected Datti Ahmed exploited the issue for political gain or mocked him by alleging he was a CIA agent harming Muslims by opposing vaccinations.129 Besides these preachers, Muhammed Yusuf was brought into Ahlussunnah by Shaikh Jaafar when Shaikh Jaafar began preaching at Maiduguri’s new mosque built by Muhammed Ndimi, an oil magnate. Ndimi was not Salafi and in 1989 even welcomed George H. W. Bush’s son, Jeb, on a wellpublicized Maiduguri tour of his factory and oil millionaire Mai Deribe’s mansion before Jeb attended business meetings in Lagos with Ibrahim Babangida.130 However, Ndimi’s ties to the Bush family and his “doubledealing” with military rulers like Babangida caused Sufi scholars to avoid his mosque.131 Ndimi, therefore, encouraged Shaikh Jaafar to preach even though Sufi scholars in Maiduguri later accused Shaikh Jaafar of anti-Sufi

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sectarianism after his first February 1994 Ramadan sermons.132 Not only did Shaikh Jaafar’s preaching violate Ndimi’s claim that his mosque was “meant for all Muslims” and contravene Gumi’s reconciliation with Sufis, but it also apparently influenced youths, including Muhammed Ali and Abu Umar, who had opportunities to hear Shaikh Jaafar’s Ramadan sermons in Maiduguri before traveling later in 1994 to Saudi Arabia and Sudan.133 Muhammed Yusuf also had advantages as Ahlussunnah’s figurehead in Maiduguri compared to Shaikh Jaafar because some Kanuris considered Hausas like Shaikh Jaafar to be newcomers to Islam. The ancestors of Kanuris not only adopted Islam starting in the tenth century, but also resisted Usman dan Fodio’s Fulani-led jihad in the nineteenth century. They further rejected Dan Fodio’s accusations of apostasy against the Kanem-Bornu rulers for muwalat (alliance) with Dan Fodio’s enemies, who Dan Fodio asserted were infidels. Hausas, in contrast to Kanuris, began adopting Islam only in the fifteenth century and intermarried with Fulanis to form northern Nigeria’s dominant Hausa-Fulani ethnic group. Bornoans, therefore, often preferred their own Kanuri-speaking preachers.134 Maiduguri was also strategic because Sufi scholars, including Ibrahim Saleh, had wide followings in neighboring Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. If Yusuf could convert Sufis, he could extend Salafi influence into the Lake Chad subregion, as Abubakar Gumi and Yakubu Musa did in Niger through Chaibou Ladan, mentioned in Chapter 2. Yusuf was also ripe to accept Shaikh Jaafar’s mentorship. After alZakzaky’s and JTI’s betrayals in 1994 and 1995, Shaikh Jaafar’s preaching and actions in the mid-1990s, including contacts with Muhammed Ali or his followers, attracted Yusuf. Moreover, unlike al-Zakzaky, Bashir Aliyu Umar, Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, Isa Ali Pantami, and other preachers who came from well-off families, Shaikh Jaafar and Yusuf both came from humble backgrounds, which represented commonality between them. Yusuf, who was seven years Shaikh Jaafar’s junior, was also young enough to become one of Shaikh Jaafar’s mentees despite never obtaining ijaza (permission) to teach on Shaikh Jaafar’s behalf—such as, for example, the Rasulul A‘azam Foundation scholars obtained from Iranian ayatollahs and al-Zakzaky did not.135 Thus, Yusuf eventually became Borno’s Ahlussunnah and SCSN representative and Ahlussunnah’s Salafi Youth (al-Shabaab alSalafiya) leader and began acquiring a following in Borno.136 Yusuf’s SCSN and Ahlussunnah positions also made him valuable to Muhammed Ali, who reportedly resettled in Nigeria in 1998 after Algerian militants, including Hassan Hattab but not al-Qaeda-loyal GSPC members, accepted government amnesties.137 After years of traveling between Nigeria and Middle Eastern countries and still desiring jihad in Nigeria, Ali needed partnerships with locally rooted Salafi preachers, especially in Ali’s native Maiduguri. Yusuf, who was still relatively new to the Salafi scene and was

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not yet deeply invested in, or formally a member of, mainstream Islamic organizations like Izala, was a suitable partner. Moreover, allying with Ali enabled Yusuf to create his own Izala or Ahlussunnah offshoot. Its distinguishing factor in northern Nigeria’s “crowded religious marketplace” became its pro-jihad and anti-Western education rhetoric, greater even than Ahlussunnah’s.138 The doctrinal split that eventually occurred between Yusuf and Shaikh Jaafar after 9/11 may have had roots in internal organizational dynamics whereby Yusuf, with Ali’s backing, began carving out his own Salafi-jihadi following in Yobe and Borno in the late 1990s. Yusuf did this by exploiting opportunities and platforms entrusted to him in Borno by Ahlussunnah, and specifically Shaikh Jaafar, including radio lectures, mosque sermons, and running al-Shabaab al-Salafiya. Shaikh Albani recalled that Yusuf’s positions against Western education and government service were influenced by Yusuf’s listening to fatwas (Islamic legal opinions) from “leaders of Algeria’s Islamist insurgency” that Shaikh Albani considered unsuitable for Nigeria.139 This was probably around 1998, but possibly earlier when Algerians, including GIA members like Hassan Allane, Iranians, Sudanese, Egyptians and other Middle Eastern nationals, and Yusuf himself were in Kano.140 Yusuf also stated in a 2009 sermon how Algerian militants’ abandoning sharia and accepting amnesties caused their numbers to “decline drastically.”141 Thus, by 1998 Yusuf became exposed to jihadist thought and literature beyond what he absorbed from Nigerians, including Muhammed Ali. This explains his familiarity with global jihadist reference points in post-9/11 sermons, discussed in Chapter 6. Moreover, it would be inconceivable that Ali did not discuss with Yusuf his experiences abroad, including with the GSPC and Khartoum-based al-Qaeda, and his ongoing relationships with Nigerian jihadist trainees, like Abu Umar and Ibrahim Abdulganiyu. It is also unlikely that Shaikh Jaafar lacked knowledge of Yusuf’s associations with Ali, especially when Shaikh Jaafar was in Maiduguri annually during Ramadan.142 While Yusuf gained influence in Ahlussunnah and partnered with Muhammed Ali, sharia implementation was being promoted most fervently by SCSN, Izala, Ahlussunnah, JTI, international Islamic university graduates, and associates of pan-Islamist institutions like the OIC.143 The campaign peaked when Zamfara became the first of twelve northern states to exploit constitutional openings in Nigeria’s post-1999 democracy to adopt sharia between 1999 and 2001. Yusuf and Ali attended the sharia inauguration ceremony where Zamfara’s governor, who was close to SCSN and Ahlussunnah, chanted “Allahu Akbar” and declared that Muslims “regained core rights taken by the British invaders one century earlier.”144 However, Zamfara’s governor later joked to former president Obasanjo that sharia “fizzled out” when he violated it by hugging Obasanjo’s female relative.145 This insincerity was evident to Yusuf, Ali, and other Salafis, who believed northern governors

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were impious and exploited pro-sharia popular sentiment to win votes, and it validated Ibrahim al-Zakzaky’s outspoken opposition to sharia implementation.146 Echoing points from a 1990 ABU speech, al-Zakzaky argued sharia would conflict with Nigeria’s constitution and only Iranian-style Islamic revolution would allow proper sharia implementation.147 Additionally, northern governors’ reliance on Sufis for sharia matters forced “doctrinal compromises” that undermined sharia’s Salafi “purity.”148 Abubakar Gumi’s alliance with Sufis, therefore, made “true sharia” unattainable. Meanwhile, Ahlussunnah scholars blamed the West for undermining sharia when human rights organizations that were newly focused on Nigeria after the country’s 1999 democratization criticized sharia criminal punishments. New York–based Freedom House, for example, ominously published a March 2002 report called The Talibanization of Nigeria, warning about “the rapid growth of the type of Islamic extremism from which Bin Laden has drawn support” only months before Ali and Yusuf cofounded the “Nigerian Taliban.”149 Furthermore, in 2002 a Nigerian anti-sharia activist and ABU graduate won a Canadian human rights award for her defense of a Katsina Muslim woman sentenced to death by stoning for conceiving a child out of wedlock. Before the decision was overturned, Yakubu Musa claimed “Godless Europe and America” were interfering with sharia and demanded US President George W. Bush “take his anti–capital punishment campaign to his home state of Texas.”150 Musa further claimed that Isioma Daniel’s 2002 ThisDay article was “planned by anti-sharia forces from within and without,” and Katsina-based Izala preachers condemned Katsina’s government for “subordinating the Islamic legal system to the Constitution.”151 However, even sharia code drafters without significant foreign ties, including lawyer Muzzamil Sani Hanga, argued that excessive emphasis on sharia penalties like “cutting off wrists” was unnecessary.152 Just as sharia implementation was failing to meet Salafi expectations, another major event occurred: 9/11. Yusuf’s son, Abu Musab, described the “Battle of Manhattan (Ghazwat Manhattan) . . . targeting American hegemony” as reawakening the conviction of his father, who was on pilgrimage in Mecca, that “jihad and jihad alone” was “the right solution” for Nigerian Muslims and “the world was divided into two categories.”153 On one side were Muslims who had “faith without hypocrisy” and embraced jihad by “migrating to lands of jihad or remaining in their lands trying to ignite the fire of jihad,” and on the other side were those who had “infidelity without faith,” including “Jews, Crusaders,” and Muslims who “supported the Crusaders” and opposed jihad.154 Within one year after 9/11, therefore, Yusuf joined the side of “faith without hypocrisy” and collaborated with Nigeria’s foremost jihadist, Muhammed Ali, to found Boko Haram. Other prominent Salafi scholars, in contrast, eventually joined the other side despite rhetoric claiming support for al-Qaeda.

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Pro–Bin Ladenism in Nigeria After 9/11, opinion polls and reports about “Osama” becoming a newly popular baby name and youths wanting to fight in Afghanistan indicated Nigerian Muslims were among the world’s most pro–Bin Laden demographic groups.155 While this sentiment transcended denominations, Nigerian Salafis’ politicization of pro–Bin Ladenism—compared to quieter or more “artistic” approaches, including Sufis’ producing pro–Bin Laden nasheeds—meant that Salafis organized the major post-9/11 pro–Bin Laden demonstrations. Pro–Bin Ladenism also provided Salafis new raisons d’être to compensate for their decreasing anti-Sufi agitation.156 However, Muhammed Yusuf and Muhammed Ali realized that just as northern governors’ sharia implementation was more political than religious, so was mainstream Salafi preachers’ pro–Bin Ladenism. It was not about actually waging jihad against the United States and its agents like Bin Laden was doing. This realization, combined with Nigerian Islamic scholars’ insufficient action against ThisDay after Isioma Daniel’s 2002 article, exposed mainstream Salafis for being “all talk and no action” and contributed to Yusuf’s separating from the Salafis and Ali’s opting for jihad. Among the first Nigerian Salafi scholars to praise al-Qaeda after 9/11 was Aminu Dourawa, who years later co-led prayers at Shaikh Jaafar’s funeral and became Kano’s hisba head. One week after 9/11, Dourawa claimed, “Allah is a suicide bomber!” and justified civilian deaths caused by suicide bombings because God “separates good from evil” in paradise.157 In 2002, Kano’s hisba led by Aminudeen Abubakar also demanded Kano’s Censorship Board ban a Hausa comedy film portraying Bin Laden as “crooked.”158 BUK’s mosques, where Ibrahim Datti Ahmed was an imam, also condemned the film. However, Kano’s Censorship Board, which ensured sharia compliance, permitted the film after its producer proclaimed Bin Laden was “a model for every Muslim.”159 As if by coordinated script, other Izala scholars praised Bin Laden after 9/11, including high-ranking Abubakar Gero Argungu. He preached to worshippers who responded by chanting “Allahu Akbar” that “al-Qaeda and the Taliban are just busy getting ready for action . . . we are only waiting on them to send us their registration forms!”160 In October 2001 sermons, Yakubu Musa similarly claimed, “every Muslim should see himself as an Usama bin Laden!” and the United States was “strangling” the “Afghan people and Islam.”161 US officials reported not only Musa’s previous GSPC involvement but also Izala’s “sponsoring anti-American diatribes” throughout Katsina that were strongest at Musa’s mosque.162 Musa even rebranded his mosque “Masjid Kandahar” to honor the Taliban’s founding city in Afghanistan. As an international phenomenon, 9/11 and the War on Terror catapulted Islam— or at least top Salafi preachers in countries ranging from Nigeria to Saudi Arabia—to unprecedented levels of opposition against the West.

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Also in October 2001, Kano’s Shaikh Ibrahim Umar Kabo, an Ahlussunnah preacher and chairman of the Nigerian Council of Ulama, which formed to promote Salafi-Sufi unity after the Kafanchan clashes, led meetings where participants praised Bin Laden.163 After pro–Bin Laden demonstrations in Kano one week later led to more than ten deaths, Ibrahim Datti Ahmed blamed the violence on Nigeria’s “hasty and insensitive” support of the US invasion of Afghanistan.164 At another pro–Bin Laden demonstration in Kano, Muslim youths holding Bin Laden posters entered Christian areas after Friday prayers and fought Christians carrying American flags, leading to riots and dozens of deaths. A video “widely circulating” in Kano featured Ahlussunnah preacher and BUK lecturer Yahaya Farouk Chedi declaring 9/11 was “God’s work.”165 Posters with Chedi, nicknamed “Nigeria’s Osama,” later promoted Kano’s hisba.166 This sentiment extended throughout Nigeria, including at October and November 2001 pro–Bin Laden demonstrations in Minna, Niger State, and Ibadan in southern Nigeria’s Yorubaland.167 In Ibadan, posters with “Bin Laden is our hero” and “We are ready to die for the Taliban” were displayed and American flags were burned. 168 Tensions were high because German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke was planning a “Crusade” in Ibadan now that bans on his events were lifted, although the Nigerian Council of Ulama demanded the bans continue.169 Bonnke was originally banned after the evangelical Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) sponsored his 1991 “Kano for Christ” mission, which led to Muslims’ rioting in Kano’s Christian quarter and hundreds of deaths. 170 Muslims were especially enraged because Ibrahim Babangida’s seemingly proChristian government accepted Bonnke but simultaneously banned from Nigeria evangelical-style South African preacher, 1986 King Faisal Prize recipient, and Bin Laden family donee, Ahmed Deedat, and American Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan.171 When Bonnke relaunched his “Crusade” in November 2001, four million Christians attended.172 Ibadan’s pro–Bin Laden demonstration, however, never received blessings from the city’s Sufi-leaning chief imam, who rejected pan-Islamism by stating, “we’re not America . . . we’re not Afghanistan,” in contrast to preachers like Yakubu Musa, who renamed their mosques “Kandahar” as if Nigeria experienced Afghanistan’s circumstances. The chief imam also alleged the demonstration was sponsored from elsewhere.173 It was, in fact, organized by the National Council of Muslim Youths (NACOMYO), whose 1987 founding was facilitated by the WAMYorchestrated merger of MSS and southwestern Nigerian youth groups involved in sharia promotion.174 However, NACOMYO aligned with SCSN to promote sharia and protest ThisDay, whose founder was from Ibadan, after Isioma Daniel’s 2002 article was published.175 Therefore, similar Islamic organizations that organized northern Nigerian pro–Bin Laden

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demonstrations also contributed to southern Nigeria’s largest demonstration, which “scores” of Muslim youths attended.176 Another contrast to SCSN, Izala, and Ahlussunnah scholars was Ibrahim al-Zakzaky and JTI’s leader Abubakar Mujahid, who originally separated from al-Zakzaky in 1994. They respectively stated in BBC interviews before the United States invaded Afghanistan that the 9/11 attacks were a “crime” but there would be consequences for the US military invasion against the Taliban and that the Taliban was right to not hand over Bin Laden to the “cowboy” United States.177 However, they expressed no support for Bin Laden. Other Nigerian Salafi-leaning Sunni organizations also distributed literature promoting Bin Laden and the Taliban, but they were not as vocal as Izala, Ahlussunnah, or MSS. The latter also reportedly played jihadist videos, which were commonly sold outside mosques, at Islamic vacation courses after 9/11.178 The pro–Bin Laden demonstrations revealed how Nigerian Salafis portrayed Nigerian Muslims as “under threat” from the War on Terror and “external forces” allied with Nigerian Christians to undermine sharia. Thus, US enemies like Bin Laden and Mullah Umar were elevated to “mythological standing” as defenders of Nigerian Muslims, and neighborhoods were renamed “Jihad Zone,” “Saudi Arabia,” and “Seat of [Bin] Laden,” especially in Jos, Plateau State, which suffered Muslim-Christian clashes in the days preceding 9/11.179 Rather than calling for fighting jihad, however, Salafi preachers’ pro–Bin Laden rhetoric represented politicized means to echo George W. Bush’s “with us or against us” speech and label those questioning their authority as being “against” Islam and “with” Bush. Their rhetoric epitomized the pan-Islamist agendas of scholars like Shaikh Jaafar who “invoked narratives of global Muslim victimhood to support local struggles,” including sharia implementation, even though the context in Nigeria was different from Afghanistan or Iraq.180 The Achilles heel of this pro–Bin Laden rhetoric was that it sensitized ordinary Muslims to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and it made some young Nigerians believe they themselves could become Nigeria’s “Taliban.” Additionally, Salafis like Muhammed Ali and Muhammed Yusuf exploited pro–Bin Laden sentiment to promote jihad. They then condemned Salafi scholars’ hypocrisy when, despite their rhetoric, they never supported jihad action. Recruiting for Jihad While Nigerian Salafis organized pro–Bin Laden demonstrations, Muhammed Ali’s followers preached in northern Nigerian cities. An October 2001 US embassy cable reported “foreign itinerant Islamic scholars” in Kano and Katsina from Sudan and Algeria, possibly including Hassan Allane, and warned they would be “the most vocal and militant ‘street clerics’ and likely

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candidates for fomenting radicalism.”181 Another cable mentioned “several militant clerics . . . who feed anti-U.S. gruel to the disaffected, particularly the street youth.”182 Boko Haram’s preachers were among them. After Yusuf Ahmed’s 2002 return from Saudi Arabia to Nigeria, he reportedly preached in Kano about the Afghan Taliban, jihad, and hijra (migration to flee persecution). He exploited “anti-West sentiments at the time, fueled by the allied forces bombardment of Afghanistan,” and recruited university students and former military personnel while almajiri students organized his “antiestablishment” lectures that “spread like wildfire.” After the SSS began monitoring him, he relocated to Maiduguri to continue preaching.183 Abu Umar, who accompanied Muhammed Ali on his 1994 Saudi Arabia and Sudan travels and adopted the alias Mullah Umar to honor the Afghan Taliban leader, recruited at universities after 9/11 and told students secular governments were “Satanic.”184 This was also Allane’s narrative when he began recruiting in Katsina and Kano in 1994. One BUK student recruited by Abu Umar after 9/11 distributed leaflets criticizing government officials who were “lax on Islamic law” before being captured during the December 2003 Kanama camp operation.185 While Muhammed Yusuf was not reported at pro–Bin Laden demonstrations, he went on recruiting campaigns with “street clerics,” including Abu Umar and Ibrahim Abdulganiyu.186 However, as Nigerian journalist Ahmed Salkida noted, they did not “announce themselves at press conferences” like Izala and Ahlussunnah, and their preaching was frequently ignored by officials.187 According to Abu Aisha, Muhammed Ali preached about “prohibiting Western education because it enabled Western influence” in Africa.188 He seems to have begun mobilizing for jihad around September 2002, when Sufi leaders warned, “people who are not even Nigerians came through their foreign connection” in Kano and “established a camp called alMuntada,” which they claimed would cause such a “serious crisis that the Maitatsine violence would be a child’s play.”189 The Sufi leaders were apparently suspicious of al-Muntada al-Islami, whose employees had ties to the GSPC and Kanama camp members, as discussed in Chapter 3. Abu Aisha recalled that Boko Haram’s shura (consultative council) convened in 2002 and “affirmed Muhammed Yusuf would be leader.”190 However, Abu Aisha noted the group members understood Muhammed Ali to be the emir (military commander) and Yusuf to be the religious leader, despite Ali’s discreetly receiving orders from Yusuf. Abu Aisha also stated the shura allowed Ali to “lead military activities and hijra” from Maiduguri to remote Yobe villages, including eventually Zaji-Biriri and Kanama.191 Meanwhile, Yusuf’s standing among wealthy people and Islamic scholars allowed him to preach, receive donations and filter money to the group, and recruit new members.192

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Whether intended or not, the group’s obscuring leadership roles between Ali and Yusuf shielded Ahlussunnah from any associations with Kanama camp’s emergence. Although Yobe villagers recall having “no doubt” that Kanama camp members were Yusuf’s followers and Yusuf acknowledged Kanama camp members included students from mosques where he preached, such as Damatru’s largest Salafi mosque and Maiduguri’s Ndimi Mosque, when security forces destroyed Kanama camp, virtually no Nigerian or international media agencies mentioned Izala, Ahlussunnah, or even Yusuf at that time.193 Only the late Ali was mentioned as the group’s leader. It was not until Yusuf publicly broke with mainstream Salafis in 2006 that his Kanama camp associations were exposed in court trials and media. Considering Kanama camp eventually hosted around a hundred individuals, including wives and children, a sizable portion must have been Yusuf’s students, while others must have been Ali’s jihadist recruits. Among Yusuf’s other roles as Boko Haram leader was managing relationships with religious and political authorities. Yusuf was appointed by Yobe’s commissioner of religious affairs, Hudu Muhammed, as Yobe Religious Board representative in Yusuf’s native Jakusko. This was also close to Zaji-Biriri village where Ali first embarked on hijra before relocating to Kanama. Yusuf similarly managed relations with Borno’s governor elected in 2003, Ali Modu Sheriff. They reportedly made an arrangement whereby Yusuf advised Sheriff on sharia, and Sheriff funded Yusuf’s preaching.194 This arrangement would have reflected how SCSN functioned. SCSN had a self-proclaimed mandate and extensive media platform to speak on sharia affairs. It offered governors “a political base of support” by promoting their sharia reforms in exchange for governors’ “bankrolling [SCSN] with funds” that were passed to SCSN representatives, who were often Ahlussunnah preachers, including Shaikh Jaafar, Yakubu Musa, and Yusuf.195 Therefore, Yusuf fulfilled his SCSN obligations by advising Sheriff or his administration in Borno and receiving funds from Sheriff’s administration with the expectation that he would praise Sheriff’s sharia implementation. There were also strategic reasons for Sheriff’s administration to cooperate with Yusuf. Sheriff was a political tactician who knew by 2003 that Yusuf’s followers represented potential threats. One way to control Yusuf, a potential enemy, was to keep him dependent by financing his preaching through the SCSN or other channels. Concurrently, Sheriff and his deputy governor, Adamu Dibal, maintained SSS files on Yusuf, if not also Muhammed Ali, whose background, travels to Saudi Arabia and Sudan, and university activities were known to Dibal.196 This may explain why Nigeria’s Ministry of Interior received “security reports” about Yusuf after he safely returned to Nigeria from Saudi Arabia and avoided arrest by fleeing there on pilgrimage before the Kanama camp operation was under way.197

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Although the Yusuf-Sheriff cooperation was short-lived because they eventually turned against each other, while it lasted they exploited each other for mutual benefits, and not based on mutual sympathies, typical of politicalreligious relationships in Nigeria and other countries. Aside from Yusuf, other Salafi scholars were aware of Kanama camp. Ibrahim Datti Ahmed and the imam at Damatru’s largest Salafi mosque, Abdullahi Diyar, for example, were sufficiently trusted by Boko Haram that the group recommended them as mediators in the only serious negotiations between Abubakar Shekau and Nigeria’s government for a shortterm cease-fire one decade later in 2012.198 Although neither Diyar nor Datti Ahmed supported Boko Haram by that time, Diyar admitted he “knew Muhammed Yusuf very well” and “Shekau casually,” and when he dialogued with “real Boko Haram leaders they were people I knew very well but had disappeared for years.” However, Diyar noted the 2012 mediation failed because the government did not “meet the real Boko Haram members . . . that have an organized system” and instead “maybe bargained with criminals not Boko Haram.”199 Datti Ahmed similarly attributed the mediation failure to President Goodluck Jonathan’s staff’s leaking details to the press to undermine discussions with Shekau about providing better treatment to imprisoned Boko Haram members and their wives and children.200 After that deception, Shekau and his spokesmen rejected any dialogue with the government and only allowed tactical-level negotiations regarding, for example, hostage exchanges.201 Because Kanama camp members mostly came from Maiduguri, northern Nigerian universities, and Salafi mosques in Yobe and Borno, they resembled the “upwardly mobile intellectuals” who typified Izala’s followership.202 Kanama camp member profiles, for example, included Ali’s University of Maiduguri recruits, some of whom trained abroad; several sons of a Maiduguri businessman, including Abubakar Adam Kambar (Abubakar Kambar),203 who later became an intermediary between the GSPC and Nigerian jihadist trainees after the Kanama camp operation; Yakubu Musa’s nephews, including elder brothers of future Ansaru commander Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi;204 Yobe governor Bukar Abba Ibrahim’s nephew; Borno government secretary Abba Gana Terab’s son; computer experts; doctors; former military personnel, possibly including those targeted for recruitment by Yusuf Ahmed; a national Quranic recitation contest winner; the BUK economics student from a prominent Nigerian family recruited by Abu Umar; and Yoruba Muslims and other southern Nigerians, including a chemical engineering student from Lagos who described Boko Haram’s goal as “overthrowing the government of infidels headed by the present politicians who have sold us out to the West.”205 In addition, there were reports that Yusuf’s followers, but not necessarily Kanama camp members, included pro-Ali Modu Sheriff vigilantes called

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ECOMOG, who adopted their name from the West Africa-based multinational force.206 One ECOMOG vigilante reportedly became a Boko Haram spokesman using the alias Usman al-Zawahiri in 2011. However, he only threatened politicians with text messages and lacked any actual connection to the group, and virtually no other Boko Haram members were ever reported to have been in ECOMOG.207 Abu Aisha also emphasized how some early Boko Haram members were born in Chad, including Yusuf’s eventual third-in-command, Mamman Nur, or had fathers who were Chadian rebels and relocated with their families to Maiduguri’s outskirts, including Bulumkutu, before the 1982 Maiduguri clashes because they were ousted from power in Chad.208 Boko Haram was also well-resourced before members arrived in Kanama, according to Abu Aisha, because the group, or at least Yusuf, received funds from wealthy members’ relatives. However, in late 2003 some funders realized the group’s members were planning to wage jihad and that they were not just devout Muslims like the Taliban. Thus, according to Abu Aisha, funders began withdrawing support for the group.209 When Boko Haram first established its rural Yobe camps, including at Zaji-Biriri and then Kanama, its members were geographically, but not organizationally, isolated from mainstream society. They were tied to government officials, Izala and Ahlussunnah scholars and mosques, university students and campuses, Muslim sympathizers, donors and relatives, Islamic charities in northern Nigeria and abroad, and GSPC and al-Qaeda operatives. And it was from Kanama that their jihad was launched in December 2003. 1. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 9. 2. BH, “Sermons Collection,” 4. 3. Nigerian Voice, “Details.” 4. B. M. Barkindo, “Islamism,” 97. 5. BH, “Sermons Collection,” 4. 6. Bintube, “Boko Haram Phenomenon,” 16. 7. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 15. 8. Kane, Muslim Modernity, 203. 9. Chirstelow, “Yan Tatsine,” 71. 10. Falola, Violence in Nigeria, 161. 11. Hickey, “1982 Maitatsine Uprisings,” 253; “Nigerian Voice, “Details.” 12. Valentine Odika Blog, “Maitatsine Bloodbath.” 13. Nigerian Voice, “Details.” 14. Real name: Muhammed Auwal Adam; nicknamed “Shaikh Albani” after Albanian Salafi scholar Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani (1914–1999). 15. Lukman, “In anki.” 16. Kenny, “Sharia and Christianity,” 342–344. 17. Kane, Muslim Modernity, 92. 18. Falola, Violence in Nigeria, 142. 19. Valentine Odika Blog, “Maitatsine Bloodbath”; Falola, Violence in Nigeria, 148. 20. Chirstelow, “Yan Tatsine,” 71; Falola, Violence in Nigeria, 142. 21. CIA, “West Africa,” 3. 22. Borno State Government, “White Paper,” 14.

Notes

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23. Chirstelow, “Yan Tatsine,” 83. 24. Ibid., 82; CIA, “Islamic Revival in West Africa,” 5. 25. Chirstelow, “Yan Tatsine,” 70. 26. Hegghammer and Lacroix, “Rejectionist Islamism,” 112. 27. Kane, Muslim Modernity, 97; A. Z. Ibrahim, “Dynamics of Islam,” 9. 28. Falola, Violence in Nigeria, 145. 29. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 2; US Embassy Abuja, “Nigeria: Borno”; Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 125. 30. CIA, “Africa Review,” 7. 31. Jaynes, “At Least 1,000 People”; CIA, “West Africa,” 3. 32. Chirstelow, “Yan Tatsine,” 70. 33. CIA, “Africa Review,” 5. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid.; New York Times, “Military Coup.” 36. Late Sheikh Muhammad Auwal Albani Zaria Fan Club, “Waywaye”; CIA, “Africa Review,” 6. 37. CIA, “West Africa,” 3–4; Falola, Violence in Nigeria, 143. 38. CIA, “Africa Review,” 11; New York Times, “Military Coup”; CIA, “West Africa,” 3. 39. Chirstelow, “Yan Tatsine,” 72. 40. CIA, “Africa Review,” 7. 41. The Treaty of Hudaibiyyah allowed Prophet Muhammad’s return to Mecca in 632. 42. K. U. Ibrahim, “Islamic Organizations,” 151, 161–162. 43. Bintube, “Boko Haram Phenomenon,” 17; al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 10. 44. Umar, “[1] Iran vs. Saudi Arabia,” 15:30–16:30. 45. Ibid., 18:00–18:30. 46. A. Z. Ibrahim, “Dynamics of Islam,” 22; US Department of State, “Annual Report.” 47. US Department of State, “Annual Report”; D. S. Mohammed, “Islamic Fundamentalism,” 80. 48. Funtua is in Katsina State, but is near Zaria and was part of Kaduna State before Katsina State’s 1987 establishment. 49. A. Z. Ibrahim, “Dynamics of Islam,” 8–9. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid., 11. 52. CIA, Islamic Revival in West Africa,” 3. 53. CIA, “West Africa,” 11. 54. Kraft, “Churches.” 55. Falola, Violence in Nigeria, 197; A. Z. Ibrahim, “Dynamics of Islam,” 18; Aisha interview, 2017; Bintube, “Boko Haram Phenomenon,” 17. 56. Falola, Violence in Nigeria, 194–195. 57. Ibid.; D. S. Mohammed, “Islamic Fundamentalism,” 81–82. 58. A. Z. Ibrahim, “Dynamics of Islam,” 20. 59. Bunza, “Iranian Model,” 237. 60. Ibid., 232. 61. Umar, “[3] Iran vs. Saudi Arabia,” 6:00, 13:54. 62. Shias are considered to have “rejected” the legitimate successors of Prophet Muhammad, including Abubakar, Umar, and Uthman, that Sunnis accepted. 63. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 10. 64. B. M. Barkindo, “Islamism,” 99–100. 65. Warburg, “Mahdism,” 223. 66. Kane, Muslim Modernity, 79; A. Z. Ibrahim, “Dynamics of Islam,” 9. 67. Kane, Beyond Timbuktu, 184; Assalafiy, “Mutun uku.” 68. B. Muhammad, “JTI@20.” 69. Isa and Adam, “History of Shia,” 235; Casey, “Suffering,” 3; Maier, “Beheading.” 70. Isa and Adam, “History of Shia,” 236; Casey, “Suffering,” 3–4; B. Muhammad, “JTI@20.” 71. B. Muhammad, “JTI@20.” 72. Referring to a hadith about the “two weighty things.” 73. CIA, “Sub-Saharan Africa,” 15.

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74. Isa and Adam, “History of Shia,” 248. 75. Ibid., 250. 76. Sounaye, “Salafi Revolutionaries,” 7. 77. A. Z. Ibrahim, “Dynamics of Islam,” 38; B. Muhammad, “JTI@20.” 78. Xinhua, “Muslims Protest Cartoon.” 79. Al-Zakzaky’s detention continued as this book went to press. HRW, “Army Attack.” 80. Isa, “Shinkafi.” 81. Giwa, “IMN Will Never”; Jos, Members of the IMN Rejoice.” 82. Aisha interview, 2017. 83. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 92. 84. Lukman, “In anki”; Lukman, “Munafunci”; Ammani, “Boko Haram Uprising.” 85. Kane, Muslim Modernity, 108–110; Abdulqadir, “Analytical Study,” 45. 86. Kane, Muslim Modernity, 109. 87. Sheikh Ja’afar Mahmoud Adam Islamic Foundation, “Sheikh Ja’afar.” 88. Yushau, “Tribute.” 89. Inflation from 1982 to 2019 calculated using CPI Inflation Calculator, https:// data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl. 90. CIA, “Islamic Revival in West Africa,” 10. 91. Ibid., 6; US Consulate Kaduna, “Muslims, Politics and Religion.” 92. Loimeier, Islamic Reform, 167. 93. Kane, Muslim Modernity, 215–217. 94. Ibid., 215. 95. Loimeier, Islamic Reform, 152. 96. Ibid., 167. 97. Brigaglia, “Contribution,” 8. 98. Ben Amara, “Izala Movement,” 246. 99. Anas discussion. 100. Brigaglia, “A Contribution to the History,” 8–9. 101. Ben Amara, “Izala Movement,” 246; Liman, Hajj 91, 48–49. 102. Ben Amara, “Izala Movement,” 286. 103. Wakili, “Islam and the Political Arena,” 3; Hassan, “Sufi Asceticism”; Brigaglia, “Popular Discourses,” 21. 104. U. Muhammad, “Reminiscence”; Ben Amara, “Izala Movement,” 285. 105. Isa and Adam, “History of Shia,” 255. 106. Riyadhul Qur’an Islamic School, “Ziyarar.” 107. Yushau, “Tribute.” 108. US Consulate Kaduna, “Muslims, Politics and Religion.” 109. Kane, Muslim Modernity, 76. 110. J. Ibrahim, “Religion and Political Turbulence,” 123. 111. Kane, Muslim Modernity, 78. 112. Ibid. 113. Sayyid Zakzaky Office, Twitter, October 20, 2019. 114. Thurston, Salafism in Nigeria, 180. 115. Abdulqadir, “Analytical Study,” 41, 45. 116. Ibid., 101. 117. Ibid., 66–67. 118. Brigaglia, “Volatility,” 182. 119. Thurston, Salafism in Nigeria, 180. 120. Brown, “Cracks,” 10–11. 121. Ibid., 15; Watts, “Al-Qa’ida’s (Mis)Adventures,” 22, 42. 122. US Embassy Islamabad, “Afghanistan.” 123. Lahoud, “Beware of Imitators,” 88; Watts, “Al-Qa’ida’s (Mis)Adventures,” 114, 131. 124. Anthony, “The Art of Making.” 125. Thurston, Salafism in Nigeria, 179. 126. Loimeier, “Boko Haram,” 146–147; Loimeier, Islamic Reform, 164. 127. Adamu, “Veiled Voices,” 5; New Nigerian, “Pressure Mounts.” 128. Tilde, “No to Mullah.”

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129. Meniru, “Dr Ibrahim.” See also Kazaure, “Sheikh Ja‘afar.” 130. Ebony, “Nigeria Supplement,” 11; Eder, “Balancing Act”; Online Nigeria, “Untold Story.” 131. Abulfathi, “Metamorphosis.” 132. Ibid. 133. S. M. discussion. 134. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 2. 135. Isa and Adam, “History of Shia,” 250. 136. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 10. 137. Kafa, “Challenges and Strategies,” 24. 138. Anonymous, “Popular Discourses,” 121–122. 139. Brigaglia, “Ja‘far Mahmoud Adam,” 37. 140. Bintube, “Boko Haram Phenomenon,” 17. 141. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 149; M. Yusuf, “Provisions for Mujahideen.” 142. Aisha interview, 2018. 143. Bugaje, “Islamic Political System,” 1–2; Loimeier, Islamic Reform, 179. 144. Kassim discussion; Idrissa, Politics of Islam, 191; 145. O. Yusuf, “How I Prevented.” 146. Polgreen, “Nigeria Turns.” 147. Ben Amara, “‘We Introduced Sharia,’” 143; Sayyid Zakzaky Office, Twitter, January 11, 2019. 148. Brigaglia, “Volatility,” 183. 149. Marshall, Talibanization of Nigeria, 8; Sanni, “Shari‘ah Conundrum,” 124. 150. Radio Kaduna, “Nigerian Muslim.” 151. Weimann, Islamic Criminal Law, 153; Labaran, “Katsina Muslim Group.” 152. Polgreen, “Nigeria Turns.” 153. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 11; BH, “Sermons Collection,” 4–5. 154. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 11; BH, “Sermons Collection,” 4. 155. Pewglobal.org, “Osama”; BBC, “Osama Baby Craze”; Dan Sango, Twitter. 156. Ben Amara, “Izala Movement,” 41–45, 55–57, 133. 157. Kassim, “Shaykh Aminu”; Aliyu, “Aminu Daurawa.” 158. Adamu, “Transnational Express,” 15. 159. Ibid., 17. 160. Brigaglia, “Slicing Off the Tumour,” 217. 161. Los Angeles Sentinel, “Muslim Scholars”; US Embassy Abuja, “Overseas Reaction.” 162. US Embassy Abuja, “Radicalization of Islam.” 163. Kazaure, “Kano Ulama”; Wakili, “Islam and the Political Arena,” 6. 164. AP, “Riots”; Vanguard, “Obasanjo Goes Tough.” 165. Onishi, “Rising Muslim Power”; Wakili, “Islam and the Political Arena,” 6. 166. Adamu, “Transnational Express,” 33. 167. Mosadomi, “Anti-U.S. Protests” 168. Irish Times, “Nigerian Muslims.” 169. Eyoboka, “Bonnke Denies Ban.” 170. Kenny, “Sharia and Christianity,” 359. 171. Vahed, Ahmed Deedat, 203, 215–216. 172. Cfan.eu, “Story of the Mission.” 173. Panapress.com, “Nigerian Moslems”; Olarewanju, “Moslem Youths.” 174. Sanni, “Shari‘ah Conundrum,” 122. 175. Weimann, Islamic Criminal Law, 149–150; Sanni, “Shari‘ah Conundrum,” 126; Makinde and Ostien, “Independent Sharia Panel,” 931. 176. Olarewanju, “Moslem Youths.” 177. Isaacs, “Nigeria’s Firebrand.” 178. Kassim discussion. 179. Harnischfeger, “9/11 in Nigeria.” 180. Anonymous, “Popular Discourses,” 137. 181. US Embassy Abuja, “Radicalization of Islam.” 182. US Embassy Abuja, “Nigeria: Violence.” 183. Oshunkeye, “Big Hunt.”

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184. Ibid.; Arizona Daily Sun, “Students.” 185. Arizona Daily Sun, “Students.” 186. K. Mohammed, “Message and Methods,” 12. 187. Salkida, “Reporting Terrorism.” 188. Aisha interview, 2017. 189. Y. Musa, “Religious Upheaval.” 190. Aisha interview, 2017. 191. Ibid. 192. Aisha interview, 2019. 193. Opakunle discussion; Agence France-Presse, “Security Agents.” 194. Idris, “Now.” 195. US Embassy Abuja, “Nigeria: Sharia.” 196. Dibal interview. 197. N. Musa, “Minister Blames.” 198. Baba-Ahmed interview. 199. Idris, “Doubts over Identity.” On Diyar, see also Brigaglia, “Volatility,” 194. 200. Baba-Ahmed interview. 201. Rejections of negotiations were in Boko Haram videos or statements on August 4, 2012; September 30, 2012; March 1 and 18, 2013; April 18, 2013; May 13, 2013; July 14, 2013; and November 4, 2013. See Zenn, “Abubakar Shekau—First 5” and Zenn, “Boko Haram—All Videos from 2013.” 202. US Embassy Niamey, “Islam in Niger.” 203. Alias: Yasir. 204. Also known as Abu Muhammed al-Hawsawi (“the Hausa”); “al-Bauchi” is pronounced as “al-Bushawi” in Arabic. 205. Oropo, “How Talibans Recruit”; News Agency of Nigeria, “Yobe State Governor”; Murray, “Interpol Trails Yobe Taliban Leader”; Oshunkeye, “Big Hunt”; Ahiante, “Police Arrest”; Buhari, “Islamic Body”; Murray, “Security Report”; Borzello, “Tracking Down”; US Embassy Abuja, “Nigerian ‘Taliban.’” 206. Pérouse de Montclos, “Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria,” 883. 207. Reuters, “Nigeria Security”; BBC, “Nigeria’s Ex-Boko Haram Spokesman.” 208. Aisha interview, 2019; Adefuye and Adefuye, “Kanuri Factor,” 128–129, 133. 209. Aisha interview, 2019.

5 Broken Alliances with Salafis

Nigeria’s jihadist community reached a turning point in Ramadan in October–November 2003 when it began taking steps toward action. Ibrahim Harun had already arrived in Nigeria, plotted attacks with Muhammed Ashafa, and prepared with Ashafa and Yusuf Ahmed sending Boko Haram members for training at GSPC camps. Concurrently, another program was launched in Mauritania for Islamic students, funded by Muhammed Bello Ilyas Damagun, a Yobe-based sponsor of Salafi preachers, including Muhammed Yusuf, but the program was suspected of having ties to militancy.1 In addition, Muhammed Ali and his followers began preparing for jihad in Nigeria. These events all preceded the Kanama camp clashes by several months and were harbingers that conflict was becoming inevitable and there was little anyone could do, including even Muhammed Yusuf, to prevent Ali from waging jihad. Schisms in the Jihadist Community The Islamic studies program in Mauritania was organized by Shaikh Jaafar’s deputy in Kano, Muhammed Nazifi Inuwa, who graduated from Khartoum’s International University of Africa, where he reportedly met Damagun, who himself became devout while studying in Khartoum.2 Program logistics, however, were arranged by a Nigerian student at the Saudi Institute in Nouakchott, Mauritania’s capital, which was affiliated with Riyadh’s Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University but was closed by Mauritania’s government in 2003 because of “fundamentalist” teachings.3 The SSS alleged Nigerian youths in Mauritania received military training.4 Shaikh Albani also learned this from a program recruit.5 Furthermore, the

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SSS alleged Damagun received $300,000 from “al-Qaeda accounts in Sudan” to fund the program and the money was transferred to him through a London-based Pakistani bank6 that was also implicated in terrorism financing with Bosnian and US Islamic charities in 1999 and 2003.7 Also a founding donor to Yakubu Musa’s Katsina school, the bank was shut down in the United States in 2017.8 The program was located in remote Ummul Qura village, where prestigious Mauritanian scholar, Shaikh Muhammad Salim Wadud, oversaw Islamic training. He was not Salafi but was known by some jihadists to “like the mujahidin” and by other observers to host “students coming to his school and becoming convinced of Salafi-jihadi ideology.”9 Two of Wadud’s students in the 1990s who cowrote his eulogy after his 2009 death, for example, were Abu Yahya al-Libi and Attiya.10 They both traveled from Mauritania to Sudan and then returned to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they were when writing Wadud’s eulogy. They also became, respectively, an al-Qaeda ideologue and Bin Laden’s main communications officer. Nevertheless, their opposition to jihadists’ excessively declaring takfir was rooted in their experiences with the GIA, if not also theological training.11 Wadud’s Saudi-educated nephew, Shaikh Muhammad al-Hassan Dedew, was the most respected scholar visiting Ummul Qura in the 2000s.12 Known for Muhammad Surur–like Salafi–Muslim Brotherhood activism, especially against Mauritania’s diplomatic relations with Israel that lasted from 1999 to 2009, he was close to several Islamists before they became jihadists, including Mauritanian GSPC and later AQIM commander Hamadou Kheiry.13 Dedew’s former bodyguard also headed a Mauritaniabased AQIM cell and masterminded the 2008 AQIM attack on Israel’s embassy in Nouakchott.14 Belmokhtar trusted Dedew enough to accept negotiations with Mauritania’s government mediated by Dedew, despite acknowledging “differences of views.”15 Therefore, Dedew resembled Abdullahi Diyar and Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, who were once close enough to Boko Haram in the early 2000s to earn the group’s trust to mediate one decade later. The possibility exists that the program for sending Nigerian youths to Ummul Qura involved exposing them to GSPC networks even though the program there did not promote jihadism. US officials found “credible information” that Muhammed Bello Ilyas Damagun funded “extremist Islamic causes” despite Muhammed Nazifi Inuwa’s and Damagun’s claims that they were unaware about the Mauritania program’s specifics.16 Moreover, Damagun’s receiving funds from Sudan through London to support the program may have contributed to suspicions about al-Muntada al-Islami because it had offices and headquarters in those locations; a Kano-based director from Sudan; and an employee, Alhaji Haruna Sharu, who was a GSPC “agent” allegedly transferring money to Boko Haram, discussed in Chapter 3. Furthermore, Muhammed Yusuf was

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accused by Nigeria’s government in December 2006 of receiving money through Damagun from an unspecified Islamic charity in 2003 to “send children abroad to learn the Quran.”17 This probably referred to the Mauritania program and a charity with funding networks in locations, such as Sudan and London, where Damagun received $300,000 from “al-Qaeda accounts.” According to Abu Aisha, the Mauritanian government’s June 2003 arrests of Dedew and forty other Islamists, including Hamadou Kheiry, and its closing down of all Islamic charities and Saudi-funded institutes after an attempted coup were considered cause for jihad by Nigerian Salafi scholars whom Kanama camp members respected.18 This could have prompted the Mauritanian training program’s launch. Nevertheless, Abu Aisha acknowledged that once Damagun learned about the group’s jihadist project in 2003, he withdrew funding to Yusuf and removed his sons from the group.19 Yobe villagers also noticed Muhammed Ali’s followers preparing for jihad before Ramadan.20 According to Abu Usama al-Ansari’s al-Risalah article, despite the “setback” of Ali’s not obtaining funds from Arabian Peninsula–based al-Qaeda members embezzled by Abu al-Bara al-Dourawi, “the youth continued on the path of Jihad” with “small numbers and meager equipment and weaponry” and “lack of support” from Islamic scholars. Like Damagun, those scholars turned against Ali when they realized he was planning jihad.21 Before Ramadan, Ali demanded Yusuf relocate to the group’s ZajiBiriri village camp and cease government ties. Yusuf then left Yobe’s Religious Board.22 However, Yusuf believed hijra was neither obligatory nor wise. Rather, Yusuf preferred a “long-term strategy aimed at building, coordinating and motivating a vast jihadi community” that was “part of the surrounding, mainstream Muslim environment.”23 This enabled Yusuf to preach to, and recruit from among, millions of Salafis in Nigeria and neighboring countries or non-Salafis, including Christians, attracted to his dawa who could convert and become his followers. Yusuf recalled in a 2006 sermon that the “Kanama brothers” reacted to his rejecting hijra by labeling him an infidel.24 Yusuf’s son, Abu Musab, also confirmed in his 2018 book25 that Ali’s followers declared takfir on, and attempted to assassinate, Yusuf because of what Yusuf described to journalists several years later as their “extremist tendencies.”26 The assassination attempt reportedly occurred after the group’s shura failed in meetings in Maiduguri to convince Yusuf that hijra was obligatory. Before prayers the next morning they shot at Yusuf. After this, Yusuf fled to Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage because, according to Isa Ali Pantami, he was afraid.27 Yusuf was, therefore, abroad when the Kanama camp operation commenced. Siding with Yusuf and rejecting hijra, Abu Aisha recalled “differences of opinion” between Ali and Yusuf that stemmed from Ali’s belief that it was “already an appropriate time to declare jihad.” Yusuf argued the group still

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needed to preach to Nigerian Muslim rulers about their infidelity in governing through secular laws and provide them opportunities to change before declaring takfir on them and waging jihad against them. Ali, however, argued Nigerian Muslim rulers were already familiar enough with Islam to know about their infidelity and required no additional time to be convinced.28 Khalid al-Barnawi, who Abu Aisha asserted knew Yusuf, penned an October 2011 letter with Boko Haram shura members to a Mauritanian AQIM commander, discussed further in Chapter 8. The letter stated that Ali’s followers declared Yusuf an infidel so they would not become infidels themselves because of their unwillingness to declare Yusuf an infidel.29 Ali’s position that Nigeria’s Muslim rulers were infidels was consistent with the writings of jihadist scholars, including Abu Basir al-Tartusi. However, Ali excessively practiced chain takfir (al-takfir bi’l-tasalsul) by declaring takfir not only on Nigeria’s Muslim rulers but also on any Muslim not declaring takfir on those rulers, including Yusuf, and then on anyone not declaring takfir on those not declaring takfir on Nigeria’s Muslim rulers. This is why, according to al-Barnawi’s 2011 letter, Ali ultimately declared takfir on the “entire” Nigerian society when nobody besides his followers declared takfir on Yusuf.30 This excessive takfir was also practiced by GIA leaders; Khartoumbased Afghan jihad veterans who attempted to assassinate Bin Laden, which al-Barnawi referenced in his letter; and by other takfir-prone Salafis in Sudan who murdered dozens of Salafis from the Sudan- and Chad-based Izala equivalent called Ansar al-Sunna (Supporters of Sunna), including one murder spree by a Libyan Afghan jihad veteran.31 Post-2013 Abubakar Shekau and post-2014 IS hard-liners also adopted this form of excessive takfir. Al-Tartusi further recalled an “ignorant fanatical minority” who declared takfir on Azzam, Bin Laden, and him during the Afghan jihad in 1986, which caused al-Tartusi to flee to Sudan, Jordan, and eventually Britain.32 Thus, chain takfir plagued al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups, including Boko Haram, from global jihadism’s inception; it was, therefore, opposed by Bin Laden, al-Tartusi, Abu Yahya al-Libi, Attiya, Yunus alMauritani, and even Muhammed Yusuf.33 If not through the GIA and contacts in Khartoum, then it was, according to a Bauchi-based Izala scholar’s May 2009 lecture, after Muhammed Ali and Abu Umar encountered a Sudanese preacher in Kano in 2003 who espoused chain takfir that they, too, adopted that ideology.34 After Ali declared takfir on Yusuf, Abu Umar and another University of Maiduguri dropout called Aminu Tashen-Ilmi, whom Abu Aisha described as a “turtle” for being “unable to move once holding an idea,” also declared Yusuf an infidel because of his associations with Yobe’s government.35 Abu Umar and Tashen-Ilmi then reportedly left Maiduguri and settled in the Zaji-Biriri camp with Muhammed Ali near Shekau’s hometown, but

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Shekau, according to Abu Aisha, never engaged in hijra.36 This may have been because Shekau was loyal to Yusuf and, according to Abu Aisha, the majority of the group members sided with Yusuf.37 Nevertheless, by December 2003, after Zaji-Biriri camp members clashed with villagers over fishing rights, antagonized villagers who did not observe sharia, especially women dressed “improperly,” and were inspected by police, they relocated to Kanama camp.38 The camp was comprised of “makeshift tents” and “mud houses” and located outside of Kanama village.39 Yusuf by then was an enemy of the “Kanama brothers” who rebelled against him and could not be deterred from waging jihad. Salafi Opposition to Global Jihad Abu Musab recalled that by 2003 his father’s sermons promoted tawhid (monotheism) and jihad and establishing an “Islamic state” (al-dawla alIslamiya). Furthermore, Yusuf “completely disavowed democracy and its Satanic scholars” and removed himself from those scholars, even though Yusuf already preached harshly against them in 2001.40 Democracy was blasphemous, according to Yusuf and other like-minded preachers, including the IMNs’ Yakubu Yahaya, because “allegiance to legislating subjects other than God,” including the constitution or parliament, was shirk.41 Citing Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who used secular education to “defend Muslims” against “Western aggression,” Shaikh Jaafar eventually conceded the caliphate was the only Islamic government, but, like Abubakar Gumi, he demanded Nigerian Muslims remove “the evil implanted by the British colonialists,” including secular institutions, “by working inside the government.” He was not supporting waging jihad like Yusuf envisioned.42 Therefore, Shaikh Jaafar accommodated the state, which Yusuf believed made him a munafiq (hypocrite). Yusuf was in a dilemma because Ali was declaring takfir on him for insufficient commitment to hijra and jihad, while he was also separating from Shaikh Jaafar and mainstream Salafis, who seemingly abandoned jihad altogether. Yusuf also discontinued preaching at Yobe Islamic Center, and Hudu Muhammed, who designated Yusuf to serve on Yobe’s Religious Board, became its head imam thereafter. Salafi scholars returning to Maiduguri from IUM also disliked the “under-credentialed” Yusuf and banned his preaching at Ndimi Mosque.43 Alhaji Baba Fugu Mohammed, therefore, built the Ibn Taymiyya 44 mosque on Maiduguri’s outskirts, which became Yusuf’s headquarters after his return to Borno from shortterm exile in Saudi Arabia.45 Yusuf also confounded SCSN representatives when its shura met in Kaduna in 2003 and decided to support presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari, who at a 2001 SCSN-organized seminar promised “to promote full

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sharia implementation” in Nigeria.46 After not objecting, Yusuf returned to Yobe and claimed SCSN representatives were apostates, which shura member Isa Ali Pantami believed resulted from pressure Yusuf received from followers in Yobe that caused him to reverse agreements with mainstream Salafis.47 However, by October 2003, Yusuf was unable to balance tensions with mainstream Salafis and followers in Yobe, and fled to Saudi Arabia. After witnessing al-Zakzaky and JTI abandon jihad and accommodate the state, Yusuf was familiar with mainstream Salafis’ “pro-Western” accommodationist trajectory by 2003. Had Yusuf lived past 2009 he probably would have been unsurprised when Izala’s two leaders after its 2011 factional unification, Abdullahi Bala Lau and Kabiru Gombe, showed proWestern affinity (al-wala) by taking photographs of themselves wearing blue jeans, Western winter clothing, and American-style cowboy hats while traveling in London.48 Yet a decade earlier at Izala factional mediations chaired by Ghana’s Ahlussunnah, Kabiru Gombe had stated Western values were “culturally incongruous” with Islam and made it “fashionable” for Muslims “to be immoral.”49 Likewise, Yakubu Musa’s Katsina school praised a student who met Queen Elizabeth II in London in 2017, and Isa Ali Pantami became Nigeria’s minister of communications under Buhari, who was elected president in 2015 and 2019 after losing in 2003, 2007, and 2011. Buhari had served as military ruler from 1983 to 1985, during which time he banned Izala, compared Izala to Maitatsine, and was called a tyrant by Ismail Idris.50 In June 2018, Buhari, now allied with Izala, hosted SCSN in Abuja, but sharia was not discussed.51 Moreover, one month later, in July 2018, SCSN hosted a “Meeting on Deradicalization of Boko Haram” involving SCSN’s Nafiu Baba-Ahmed, Izala’s Bashir Aliyu Umar, JTI’s Abubakar Mujahid, Yobe Islamic Center’s Hudu Muhammed, IIRO’s Saudi country director for Nigeria, and dozens of other Islamic scholars.52 Yusuf’s charge that Izala became “government scholars” was seemingly corroborated when Abdullahi Bala Lau requested Nigerian Muslims on pilgrimage in Mecca pray for Buhari’s health in 2017 and “for the successful conduct of [the 2019] elections and giving us good leaders.”53 Yusuf would have further rolled over in his grave to learn that three decades after Abubakar Gumi tolerated Ibrahim Babangida’s reestablishing diplomatic ties with Israel as “compensation” to Christians when Nigeria became an OIC member, Buhari wished Benjamin Netanyahu “a successful new term . . . that will bring enduring peace and security to the Middle East” following Netanyahu’s April 2019 reelection as prime minister.54 As Yusuf anticipated, Izala, Ahlussunnah, SCSN, JTI, and Muslim rulers associated with them became “allied” with the West and “the Jews,” compromised sharia, and opposed jihad—and Yusuf rejected partaking in that. One explanation for mainstream Salafis’ ostracizing Yusuf was also that they—like everyone from Muhammed Ndimi to Muhammed Bello

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Ilyas Damagun, to Borno and Yobe officials, to Yobe villagers—understood Ali’s followers were preparing for jihad, which they did not approve. They also knew Yusuf was building his own anti-Izala following, mixing elements of his father’s objection to Western education, al-Zakzaky’s animus toward constitutional democracy, Izala’s Salafism, Ahlussunnah’s panIslamism, and Muhammed Ali’s jihadism, if not also Maitatsine’s mahdism with Yusuf as mujaddid. Shaikh Jaafar would also not have been oblivious to Sufis’ accusations against al-Muntada al-Islami in 2002 or allegations against his deputy, Muhammed Nazifi Inuwa, related to the Mauritania program in 2003. In addition, according to Abu Aisha, a Muhammed Ali deputy, Bulama Shuaibu, informed authorities about Ali’s followers, meaning the authorities knew about Ali’s plans from sources within the jihadist community.55 Salafi scholars may have tolerated Ali and Yusuf if Ali’s followers in Zaji-Biriri and then Kanama had planned to wage jihad only in “occupied” countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, or even Mauritania and Algeria, or only defended Nigerian Muslims during Muslim-Christian clashes, but not for targeting Nigeria’s government or Westerners in Nigeria, let alone the “entire” society on which Ali declared takfir. Furthermore, by 1998 some observers of Shaikh Jaafar recall that he reconsidered the maslaha (benefit) and mafsada (harm) of supporting jihadism and “decided the evil of going down that road [jihadism] would outweigh whatever good intentions he had.”56 Also that year, Ali resettled in Nigeria after years spent with jihadists abroad and after al-Qaeda’s US embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people and would have been known to scholars like Shaikh Jaafar who followed world events that affected Muslims. By 1998, neither Shaikh Jaafar nor other Salafi scholars would have been unaware of Ali’s dangerous ideological progression or al-Qaeda’s agenda. Considering Isa Ali Pantami personally knew about Ali’s foreign travels and preaching activities in Nigeria and was approached by Muhammed Ali in the 1990s, Shaikh Jaafar would likely also have known as much, if not more, about Ali as Pantami.57 Therefore, Salafi scholars like Shaikh Jaafar who might not have appreciated the ramifications of jihad in Nigeria when Ali first visited Khartoum in 1994 would have become more cautious by 1998 and especially by May 2003, as discussed subsequently. Shaikh Jaafar’s growing reticence about jihadism was also reflected in his own reservations about sharia implementation compared to his Salafi peers as early as 2000.58 He may also have realized the consequences of promoting jihad after 9/11 more than his peers, which is why he was not reported praising Bin Laden after 9/11, although he was not necessarily in a position to demand other scholars not rhetorically support Bin Laden as ardently as they did. Nevertheless, when Muhammed Ali’s jihad was becoming reality in late 2003, Salafi scholars, including Shaikh Jaafar, uniformly turned against Ali.

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Another factor likely affecting Shaikh Jaafar’s calculus was AQAP’s May 2003 attacks in Riyadh only three months after Bin Laden’s statement mentioning Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, among other countries. AQAP’s attacks killed thirty-nine people at foreigners’ residences and government buildings, and the Saudis arrested hundreds of pro-al-Qaeda Islamic scholars, including Ali al-Khudair and Sulaiman al-Alwan, who met Abu Muhammed al-Yemeni prior to his Sahel mission.59 Before AQAP’s attacks, Saudi scholars encouraged Saudis and other Muslims to fight in national conflicts around the world as “one Muslim nation.” This was not only an aspect of pan-Islamism but also Saudi Arabia’s way of demonstrating its “Islamic credentials” to compensate for its “un-Islamic” hosting of US troops during the Persian Gulf War, which Muhammad Surur’s disciples and other Islamists cited to question the monarchy’s legitimacy. However, once Saudi Arabia faced blowback from AQAP members who trained abroad and launched attacks domestically, the Saudi government curtailed support to Muslims partaking in conflicts around the world.60 Saudi Arabia pressured Saudi Islamic scholars, including Muhammad Surur’s disciples, to follow its new direction. Thus, after AQAP’s attacks, leading Saudi scholars declared jihad in Iraq “only legitimate for the Iraqi people” and not other Muslims whether from Saudi Arabia or Nigeria. Some Saudi scholars eventually discouraged non-Iraqis from fighting in Iraq at all.61 This would have made the jihadist project in Nigeria unnecessary if any Saudi-influenced Nigerian Salafi scholars supported Ali’s jihadist project so Nigerians could train and fight in jihads abroad. Their post-9/11 rhetoric indicates few of them would have opposed that. However, with no appetite for jihad in Nigeria or abroad after May 2003 and the risks of jihadism increasingly understood, Nigeria’s jihadist community became a liability. Saudi policies were also communicated to imams of mosques receiving funding from Saudi donors and international Islamic charities, including Shaikh Jaafar’s al-Muntada Mosque, and to international Islamic university alumni, including IUM graduates like Shaikh Jaafar, whom the Saudis considered their “clientele.”62 Aware of Saudi pressure on Saudi scholars after May 2003, Nigerian Salafis, including “clientele” like Shaikh Jaafar, who communicated with Shaikh Zarban and Medina-based Nigerian IUM students, and other Ahlussunnah and independent Saudi-loyal Nigerian Salafi scholars, including Medina-based Ibrahim Jalo Jalingo and Isa Ali Pantami, respectively, may have desired to finally eliminate Nigeria’s own jihadist community.63 Explicit or implicit Saudi pressure on Nigerian Salafi scholars to oppose jihadism after May 2003 would not have been unprecedented. This is because the Saudis also influenced Izala’s formation, interceded in Izala’s factional disputes, and oversaw Aminudeen Abubakar’s formation of the Dawa Group and Shaikh Jaafar’s formation of Ahlussunnah. If Shaikh

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Jaafar’s confidant Ibrahim Khalil’s observation was correct that Shaikh Jaafar received pressure from “international mentors” to distance himself from more “radical” followers around the time of the Kanama camp clashes, then Shaikh Zarban’s influence may have contributed to Shaikh Jaafar’s and other Ahlussunnah scholars’ support for the crackdown, especially if Shaikh Zarban suspected or knew there were Saudi donor, al-Qaeda, and GSPC funding streams to Muhammed Ali and his coleaders.64 Moreover, if Ahlussunnah leadership followed Saudi Arabia’s example by supporting the Kanama camp crackdown, it would have been consistent with Abu Aisha’s recollection that Ali’s followers were initially “pushed into action” by scholars like “Kafanchan” (Yakubu Musa), Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, and Shaikh Jaafar to “defend Islam.”65 However, Abu Aisha noted those same scholars told Ali’s followers in 2003, “it’s not the right time” and they “would only harm the umma” by waging jihad. Finally, according to Abu Aisha, those scholars “joined the government’s side to crush us,” and Shaikh Jaafar announced on the radio the “government should take action against us.”66 Absent Saudi scholarly support for Muslims to wage jihad abroad and with no Muslim-Christian clashes under way in Nigeria in December 2003 or mainstream Nigerian Islamic scholarly support for attacking Western targets like what Ibrahim Harun was planning, Nigerian Salafis sided with Nigerian officials’ decision to eliminate the jihadist community rather than tolerate its existence any further. Changing the Guard Most accounts of Kanama camp’s destruction mention fishing disputes that triggered clashes and security forces’ intervening to destroy the camp. These accounts, however, conflate prior fishing disputes in Zaji-Biriri village with Kanama camp. Zaji-Biriri fishing disputes and Zaji-Biriri-based camp members’ harassing a womn caused the village chief to issue an ultimatum for group members to leave. This combined with police pressure prompted Ali’s followers’ relocation to Kanama in December 2003 after months in Zaji-Biriri.67 The final straw before the operation that destroyed Kanama camp occurred when camp members killed a police recruit, stole his gun and a police vehicle, and burned down the village chief’s home because he was Kanama’s “government representative.”68 However, before that incident, local officials and Islamic scholars were already monitoring the group in Zaji-Biriri and knew they had moved to Kanama village, home to 3,000 residents and 30 miles away from Zaji-Biriri.69 The SSS reportedly also arrested several members who were planning to attack Queen Elizabeth II on her intended December 3, 2003, Kano visit, but she remained only in Abuja for security reasons during her four-day Nigeria stay.70 Kanama

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camp members must have known the security forces were on their tail, which is why they launched the jihad days after arriving in Kanama. Ahlussunnah scholars familiar with Ali’s followers also would have been aware of camp members’ relocation to Kanama and might have supported the group’s peaceful dispersal. However, Muhammed Ali’s jihadist zeal and excessive takfir made negotiations futile. The camp members’ appreciable training and combat skill was also demonstrated by their fighting retreat from Kanama into Yobe’s capital, Damatru, Geidam town, and Tarmuwa local government area’s headquarters, Babangida, where they destroyed government buildings. They also reached the Yobe-Borno border and fought police officers patrolling checkpoints until they were halted in January 2004.71 When clashes abated, around twenty Kanama camp members and two policemen were killed, weapons and police vans were stolen from police stations around Kanama, 10,000 civilians fled their homes, and forty-seven members were arrested, including seven in Niger.72 Leaflets group members distributed indicated they were creating an “Islamic state” under Mullah Umar’s leadership, killing “unbelievers in uniform,” and calling on Muslims to fight jihad “to defend Islam.”73 The name camp members imprinted on stolen vehicles was “Afghanistan” and they wore “Islamic headgear,” “chanted in Arabic,” tied red cloths to their weapons, referred to Kanama camp as “Kandahar,” and hoisted the “Taliban flag” in Kanama.74 Like Yakubu Musa and Ahlussunnah preachers calling their mosques Kandahar, camp members were involved in local-level relationships with village chiefs but simultaneously partaking in the post-9/11 War on Terror global drama and subject to its reverberations in Nigeria.75 There was little comment on Kanama camp events from Salafi preachers or the media after its destruction, and postconflict dialogue occurred in Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, Ibrahim Datti Ahmed stated in January 2004 he was “not in position to say whether I support what they did or not, but they must have their reasons. . . . They aren’t the trash in government.” He also described members as “very sophisticated youths,” which reflected their university and international experience. The Kanama village chief’s son also claimed to hear camp members speaking Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri, Yoruba, and Igbo and recounted their forcing villagers to dig trenches for them once the fighting in Kanama began.76 Presumably, former military personnel at Kanama camp and the military training of other members abroad contributed to their combat knowledge and capabilities. Reporting on Kanama was also muted because Salafi scholars and local government officials had incentives to distance themselves from the debacle. Furthermore, larger Muslim-Christian clashes in Yelwa-Shendam, Plateau State, occurred between February and May 2004 with hundreds killed that soon overshadowed the Kanama events. Isa Ali Pantami’s sermon after the Yelwa-Shendam clashes nevertheless demonstrated Nigerian Salafi scholars’

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desire for Muslim militias to exist like the group at Kanama. However, Ali’s takfirism and global jihad agenda contradicted mainstream Salafis’ intention for such militias to operate within official Salafi structures and to defend Muslims during clashes with Christians but not attack the West or Nigerian government. In his sermon, for example, Pantami emotively cried, urged Ahlussunnah to consider jihad obligatory (fard ‘ayn) for “every single believer,” and called for hisba members with himself as commander to travel to Yelwa-Shendam to defend Muslims. However, he still indicated Taliban and al-Qaeda inspiration by concluding with prayers to “give victory” to both of them.”77 Despite that sermon, hisba members and Muslim militias never mobilized to defend Muslims in Yelwa-Shendam just as they never did in Kafanchan in 1987 or Zango-Kataf in 1992. Rather, Boko Haram, and especially Ansaru led initially by Pantami’s estranged protégé, claimed to fill that void, as discussed in Chapter 8. Among the few reports about Kanama camp’s fall that made international headlines was a January 14, 2004, BBC article stating a “Nigerian Taliban” leader had been “in Afghanistan training with the Taliban,” probably referring to Ali, while another leader was “currently in Saudi Arabia after falling sick while attending Muslim Haj,” referring to Muhammed Yusuf’s reason for extending his Saudi visa and not immediately returning to Nigeria.78 There were no authoritative accounts about Ali except that he died.79 It was not until 2014 that new information about Ali emerged from a former Ansaru member who claimed Ali escaped from Kanama with three deputies to Shaikh Jaafar’s Kano guesthouse.80 Ali’s business partner in Kaduna when Ali was in Sudan, Babagana (who may have been confused with the informant, Bulama Shuaibu), then reportedly told Shaikh Jaafar Ali’s location, and Shaikh Jaafar ordered Ali and his deputies to be killed.81 Another similar, but more credible, account of Ali’s death was provided by Abu Aisha and contained details corroborated by Isa Ali Pantami and by two Agence France-Presse and Tell articles from 2004, the latter also including photographs of Kanama camp members’ corpses and the destruction in Kanama and surrounding areas.82 Abu Aisha claimed Ali fled Kanama and arrived in Gashua, Yobe, and then traveled farther to Damboa and Gwoza, Borno, before returning to Sandiya village near Damboa, where a village chief provided Ali haven.83 However, the village chief betrayed Ali and informed vigilantes searching for Ali about his location. They cornered Ali, but Ali’s followers had weapons to defend themselves. A stalemate ensued until Bulama Shuaibu exited the group’s shelter and vigilantes surrounded the group and killed Ali and several others. This caused Mudashiru, who was subsequently imprisoned with Muhammed Ashafa, Mallam Rabiu,84 and Abu Aisha, to grow suspicious about Bulama Shuaibu.85 These events were also discussed in Abu Usama al-Ansari’s January 2017 al-Risalah article that recalled “pro-government vigilantes”

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killed Muhammed Ali, and in Tell’s article that mentioned Ali’s death and five members who were attempting to travel to Cameroon but were killed by “local vigilantes” in Damboa on January 5, 2004.86 According to Abu Aisha, Shaikh Jaafar “may have had a hand” in Ali’s death either by communicating with the village chief in Sandiya or collaboration with Bulama Shuaibu and security officials.87 Isa Ali Pantami also noted Shaikh Jaafar knew it would be easier for security forces to eliminate Ali’s followers while they were together at Kanama rather than allowing them to disperse throughout the country, which could occur if Kanama camp was not destroyed immediately after the group’s arrival there.88 Abu Aisha further mentioned Shaikh Jaafar’s disowning the arrested Kanama camp members, who claimed he was their teacher, caused them to call him a murtad (apostate) and seek revenge on mainstream Salafi scholars, especially Shaikh Jaafar.89 A 2015 article recounting Boko Haram history in an IS Turkishlanguage magazine indicated Kanama camp members believed they had “reached the level of strength for armed action.”90 However, in retrospect they could not outmatch Nigeria’s security forces. Ali’s death also meant the group needed to reorganize and Yusuf’s caution about waging jihad was prescient. Meanwhile, Yusuf Ahmed was also killed with Hassan Allane in Niger, and Abu Umar reportedly “eluded arrest” and fled to Saudi Arabia where he was never heard from again.91 Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi, whose older brothers were at Kanama camp, eventually became the group’s “military emir,” traveled to GSPC camps, and met Abubakar Kambar and Khalid al-Barnawi in the Sahel or Algeria. They subsequently helped revive formal relationships between Boko Haram and GSPC members. The Leader Returns Having borne some responsibility for Yusuf’s and Ali’s rise and become Nigeria’s most prominent Salafi preacher, Shaikh Jaafar traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2004 to meet Yusuf with two IUM doctoral students: Muhammed Sani Rijiyar Lemo, who attended Gwale, Kano’s Arabic Teachers’ College with Shaikh Jaafar in 1988, supported Shaikh Jaafar’s forming Ahlussunnah in 1993, succeeded Shaikh Jaafar as al-Muntada Mosque’s chief imam after his 2007 assassination, and hosted Shaikh Zarban at his Bauchi mosque during Ramadan throughout the 2010s; and Ibrahim Jalo Jalingo.92 They blamed Yusuf for “sowing discord” among Muslims, which ironically was the complaint Maiduguri Sufis had lodged against Salafi preachers one decade earlier.93 Shaikh Jaafar nevertheless encouraged Yusuf to exonerate himself of Kanama camp involvement through dialogue with Nigerian officials and return home. However, Yusuf later claimed elder Maiduguri Salafi preacher Abba Aji warned him Shaikh Jaafar might harm him if he returned.94 Another Boko Haram member claimed Abba Aji and Shaikh Jaafar were

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Yusuf’s two most important teachers until the latter disowned him.95 Therefore, Yusuf trusted Abba Aji and ignored Shaikh Jaafar’s advice. In Saudi Arabia, Yusuf preached to Nigerians and reportedly had Salafi contacts who provided him funds on his two prior Mecca pilgrimages, including on 9/11.96 The Kanama camp events also “indicated Yusuf and his own loyalists had potential [to wage jihad] compared to numerous others” and led to “serious courting by various people.”97 For example, Abu Aisha recalled that Algeria-trained jihadists in Niger and Mali, who were probably GSPC members, became attracted to the group because they were impressed by Kanama camp members’ demonstrating “enough strength to wage jihad” when Abu Umar and Bukar Abba Ibrahim’s nephew led the group’s temporary capture of Damatru’s government house during their fighting retreat.98 Yusuf, therefore, explained to Saudi funders, perhaps including his Salafi contacts, Islamic charity donors who had provided money to Muhammed Ilyas Bello Damagun, or al-Qaeda donors who had previously intended to fund Muhammed Ali through Abu al-Bara alDourawi after 9/11, that Shaikh Jaafar abandoned jihad and embraced democracy. Agreeing with Yusuf, they promised to support his recommencing the jihadist project, and considered him Shaikh Jaafar’s “replacement” because Yusuf could wage the jihad Shaikh Jaafar abandoned.99 They provided Yusuf with tens of thousands of dollars to rebuild Nigeria’s jihadist community, which is probably why Shaikh Jaafar referenced suspicious circumstances surrounding Yusuf’s return to Nigeria just before Shaikh Jaafar was assassinated, discussed in the next chapter.100 Nigeria’s government wanted Yusuf to return to Nigeria, accept Izala’s increasingly pro-government agenda, and rein in Kanama camp holdouts. Several dozen Kanama camp members, for example, regrouped in Niger and Cameroon, where Muhammed Ali’s followers intended to travel before being killed in Damboa. They then “broke into smaller units” and killed five villagers in Bama and Gwoza, Borno, in September 2004 before security forces killed twenty-seven members and forced others to flee toward Cameroon’s border.101 These fighters’ commander, a University of Maiduguri graduate, told security forces after he was captured that Muhammed Ali trained his cofighters and that Ali was a “sharia law enforcer.”102 One month later, several dozen Kanama camp members again ambushed police officers near Nigeria’s border with Chad and Cameroon. This demonstrated their considerable fighting capacity, possibly with further training in the Sahel after Kanama camp’s fall. It is assumed they killed twelve officers who were never seen again.103 These former Kanama camp members were attempting to retaliate. However, they were still relegated to small brigades in rural Borno near Lake Chad. US officials reevaluated Boko Haram after these attacks. Although they initially concluded Kanama camp members were “likely not tied to al-Qaeda,”

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in December 2004 they found “evidence these incidents may have international connections” and “individuals with ties to al-Qaeda are in country.”104 Nigerian officials stated by 2005 Boko Haram’s origins were “sketchy” but its members were a “clique of university students” and “received training and funding from Islamic bodies and charities in the Middle East.”105 The United States, however, lacked Kanuri speakers and extensive northern Nigerian diplomatic reach because after Abuja became Nigeria’s capital in 1991, the United States eliminated its Kaduna consulate, built its Abuja embassy, and maintained only a Lagos consulate. Whereas in the 1970s the CIA investigated northern Nigerian religious influencers ranging from Abubakar Gumi to Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, by 2004 knowledge about figures like Muhammed Ali, Muhammed Yusuf, and even Shaikh Jaafar was comparatively scant. In the 1970s, the United States was concerned about Nigeria in the context of Soviet, Libyan, and Iranian geopolitical competition, but in 2004 the new US geopolitical interest—the War on Terror—was oriented primarily toward the Middle East and South Asia, not Nigeria. Around the time former Kanama camp members launched these rural Borno attacks, Shaikh Jaafar and other Nigerian Salafi scholars in Saudi Arabia finally convinced Yusuf to write a statement declaring his innocence in the Kanama camp clashes. With legal assistance and consent from Borno’s deputy governor, Adamu Dibal, and Borno’s government secretary, who both met Yusuf in Saudi Arabia, Yusuf returned home.106 However, this only brought more confrontation. After returning to Nigeria, Yusuf established that he was Boko Haram’s new leader, and in January 2006 he was interviewed by Agence FrancePresse journalist Aminu Abubakar. Yusuf stated an “Islamic system of government should be established in Nigeria and if possible all over the world,” but asserted it could be achieved through dawa. He also acknowledged that his own and other preachers’ students “headed for the bush” with Ali, but Ali’s followers declared takfir on “those not sharing their ideology.” Yusuf also claimed he had 3,000 followers.107 Among them were Ali’s former supporters, including Aminu Tashen-Ilmi, who now accepted Yusuf’s patient strategy but still desired jihad.108 Tashen-Ilmi, for example, told Aminu Abubakar he considered fellow members to be mujahidin, supported Bin Laden, was loyal to the Taliban, and viewed as martyrs members who were killed in Kanama and rural Borno in September and October 2004. In addition, Tashen-Ilmi claimed “Allah mandated every Muslim to fight to establish an Islamic government in Nigeria.” Another one of Yusuf’s followers stated members were still in “hiding in Maiduguri” and “under pressure from the security services” and others fled abroad, but “eventually they will all come back to Nigeria” for jihad.109 Recognizing the SSS was monitoring the late Ali’s supporters, Abu Aisha recalled that Yusuf told former Kanama camp members to maintain distance from him in public.110

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Group members at GSPC camps, including Khalid al-Barnawi, Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi, and Abubakar Kambar, also accepted Yusuf’s leadership, and al-Bauchi and al-Barnawi also communicated with Yusuf’s shura members.111 Ansaru leader Abu Usama al-Ansari thus observed in his al-Risalah article that Yusuf, described as a former “follower” of the “mujahid brother” Muhammed Ali, “followed in [Ali’s] footsteps” and “united the ranks of the mujahideen,” which would have been divided after the Kanama camp clashes, and Ali’s supporters pledged loyalty to Yusuf.112 Although Yusuf was neither as hard-line or experienced as Ali nor as learned as AQIM’s theologians, he was the only Nigerian Salafi scholar “really committed to jihad.”113 He was, therefore, the most suitable leader to continue the jihadist project in Nigeria. Nigerian jihadists abroad and in Nigeria subsequently rallied around him. Yusuf maintained operational security both by distancing himself publicly from the late Ali’s supporters and by not advertising group members’ relationships to Algerian jihadists or Nigerian jihadists with AQIM. Abu Aisha, for example, recalled that Yusuf’s assistant told him Yusuf received “foreign visitors” who requested Yusuf “join their organization.” However, Yusuf avoided linking with them and rejected money “conditioned on following their model” because Yusuf believed their strategies needed to be different. Yusuf nevertheless recognized that his group and those visitors, who Abu Aisha understood to be from al-Qaeda, had “common goals to ensure the Islamic legal system exists in the entire world.”114 Thus, Yusuf sent some followers to “countries where foreign jihadists operated to observe their activities and see what would benefit” his group.115 Canadian UN official Robert Fowler claimed he witnessed a Kano-born Boko Haram “observer” after Fowler was kidnapped by Belmokhtar’s fatherin-law, Oumar Hamaha, near Niger’s capital, Niamey, in 2008.116 Fowler stated this Nigerian, whose alias was Obeida, read the Quran incessantly and was more pious than AQIM members.117 Nevertheless, Nigerians with AQIM were not always unified. Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi, for example, trained under Khalid al-Barnawi, but other Nigerians reportedly chose Abubakar Kambar as their commander.118 Al-Barnawi meanwhile remained close to Belmokhtar, but al-Bauchi and al-Barnawi eventually joined Abu Zeid’s Tariq ibn Ziyad brigade despite Abu Zeid and Belmokhtar’s fractious relationship.119 Al-Barnawi also reportedly feuded with a “spiritual advisor” at an Algerian training camp, which may have been because, like Belmokhtar in Afghanistan, al-Barnawi had met al-Qaeda legends in Sudan that made some AQIM leaders who never met al-Qaeda Central members feel inferior.120 Droukdel also viewed Belmokhtar as disobedient, including for allowing brutal beheadings of Mauritanian soldiers in the GSPC’s 2005 Lemgheity barracks attack with al-Barnawi.121 Belmokhtar subsequently acknowledged those beheadings were “errant.”122

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AQIM’s shura further resented that Belmokhtar released Fowler in April 2009 for a “low amount” of $1 million before AQIM could “bring an international dimension” to the kidnapping by “coordinating with [alQaeda] leadership in Khorasan [Afghanistan and Pakistan].”123 The shura also noted Belmokhtar’s inability to “follow anyone” in AQIM’s leadership, including Droukdel, which is why Droukdel and Abu Zeid were promoted over Belmokhtar in AQIM ranks. 124 Belmokhtar, therefore, was always loyal to al-Qaeda Central, but not AQIM leadership, which is why Belmokhtar eventually established his own Sahel-based brigades loyal specifically to Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri and only valued his encounters with al-Qaeda Central liaisons, especially Abu Muhammed al-Yemeni and Yunus al-Mauritani, and not liaisons from Droukdel. 125 Belmokhtar’s fighters also saw Abu Zeid’s fighters mistreating foreign hostages, including women. Therefore, Belmokhtar’s release of Fowler was to spite Abu Zeid. 126 The rivalries between AQIM commanders and Belmokhtar also affected their relationships with Boko Haram and Ansaru after 2009, including Khalid al-Barnawi, who, like Belmokhtar, maintained foremost loyalty to al-Qaeda Central, despite that they all cooperated when it was in their mutual interests. By 2008, Malian authorities acknowledged there were Nigerians in AQIM’s ranks.127 However, not all Nigerians were Yusuf’s followers before becoming jihadists. One former Islamic student in Kano and “son of a Nigerian aristocrat,” Abu Nasir, for example, was recruited by al-Qaeda while attending university in Khartoum, Sudan, where he complemented his English with Arabic proficiency and, like Hassan Allane’s preaching in 1994, started believing Nigeria was a Western “puppet.”128 He traveled with several students from Sudan to Algeria and Mauritania for training with Abu Zeid, where he received mentorship from Abu Zeid, came under Khalid alBarnawi’s command, and learned of AQIM’s communications with Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. Although two members of Abu Nasir’s group died during rigorous training sessions, Abu Nasir returned to Nigeria in 2008, “went underground in Lagos,” maintained contact with al-Barnawi, and joined Ansaru. However, he acknowledged Ansaru was cooperating with Boko Haram after Ansaru’s killing of seven foreign engineers in 2013, discussed in Chapter 9.129 The flow of Nigerians to AQIM was consistent enough that a December 2009 letter from AQIM to Bin Laden reported that, aside from Algerians, “the most important groups numerically are Mauritanians, Libyans, and Nigerians” and “the Nigerian group has been here over the past years” and “they enter individually and collectively and return to their country after the training period, so their number is impermanent.”130 This indicated Nigerians were training with AQIM in the mid-2000s, but their numbers increased after the July 2009 crackdown that resulted in Muhammed Yusuf’s death.

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Droukdel also confirmed in a 2008 interview there were a “considerable number” of non-Algerians in AQIM, including Nigerians.131 Yusuf’s group, therefore, included followers with AQIM while other Nigerians like Abu Nasir trained independently with AQIM but later joined Ansaru or Boko Haram. Yusuf’s decision not to link his group formally with AQIM also insulated him from being labeled jihadist and enabled him to amass followers in Nigeria while avoiding undue attention from Nigerian security agencies. Furthermore, knowing he was watched by the SSS, Yusuf established a “security committee” to prevent members from “committing acts attracting security forces’ suspicion” and to root out spies, including from Izala, and SSS informants like Bulama Shuaibu.132 Yusuf’s strategy succeeded in making Adamu Dibal, who evidently was tracking him, believe al-Qaeda “ceased supporting” Yusuf because Yusuf was “unreliable.”133 However, unbeknownst to authorities, Yusuf had followers training and cultivating ties to AQIM that they would only fully exploit after Yusuf’s death, and Yusuf was psychologically preparing his followers for the eventual jihad. Boko Haram’s Proto-State As Yusuf recommenced his preaching in Nigeria and opposed Izala and Nigeria’s government, he faced increasing pressure. Thus, in July 2006, Yusuf, described as a “fiery preacher,” was arrested by the SSS for leading the “Taliban” and for “complicity in unrest” at Kanama, but he was released.134 Yusuf was rearrested in December 2006 for “illegally receiving foreign currency” reportedly from an “al-Qaeda group in Sudan,” provided to him by his “close associate,” Muhammed Bello Ilyas Damagun, for sending students to Mauritania in 2003.135 This was probably when, according to Abu Musab, Yusuf was accused of having “al-Qaeda links.” However, there was insufficient proof, and Yusuf was released.136 While imprisoned, Yusuf preached to, and even converted to Islam, fellow inmates, and when released, he taunted officials.137 One of Yusuf’s cellmate converts—who later stole Boko Haram’s arms budget and became an anti-Fulani herdsman vigilante and was, therefore, unreliable—claimed Yusuf rejected his students’ training in Mauritania because he thought they would be used by Mauritania’s government, but some trainees still returned from Mauritania to Nigeria with bomb-making skills.138 Borno’s Ministry of Religious Affairs director also told US officials that Yusuf’s arrests turned him into “a hero.”139 Adamu Dibal further observed that Yusuf became “a messiah” to his followers.140 Indeed, after Yusuf’s December 2006 arrest a reporter visited his Ibn Taymiyya mosque to interview his deputy, Shekau, who stated the group would never withdraw loyalty to Yusuf and Yusuf would be “victorious like prophets before him.”141

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The Borno Ministry of Religious Affairs director was initially Yusuf’s follower and longtime politician from around Benisheikh, Borno, Alhaji Buji Foi, when Ali Modu Sheriff formed the ministry in 2005 to guide Borno’s sharia implementation. Designating Buji Foi as director signified Sheriff’s administration’s anticipating Yusuf’s cooperation after returning to Nigeria from Saudi Arabia and the administration’s providing Yusuf a stake in Borno government’s sharia implementation, if not also some financial support through Alhai Buji Foi so Yusuf would not cause trouble. However, the ministry was as ineffective as similar ministries implementing sharia in other northern states.142 This led Yusuf to demand Alhaji Buji Foi’s resignation in 2007 and his ending cooperation with the ministry. By 2007, however, Sheriff ignored Yusuf because Sheriff quashed opposition to his governorship, could not run for another term, and did not need Yusuf or, more importantly, SCSN to provide him political support.143 Alhaji Buji Foi’s leaving the ministry also signaled Yusuf and Sheriff’s becoming enemies and pursuing their respective religious and political agendas independent of, and naturally at odds with, each other. For example, like Zamfara’s governor in 1999, Sheriff cared little for actually implementing sharia, especially according to Yusuf’s standards, while Yusuf’s growing religious clout in Borno was considered threatening to Sheriff’s administration. This, therefore, forced Sheriff or at least his deputy, Adamu Dibal, who followed Izala preachers and worshipped at Izala’s mosques, to continue monitoring Yusuf. Attempting to create an organization as independent from the government as possible, Yusuf established various committees. Besides the security committee, there was the military committee, which, according to Abu Musab, “protected group leaders and mosques and secretly trained in firearms and explosives.”144 This indicated the group prepared to withstand security forces more effectively if another crackdown like at Kanama occurred. Other committees included the finance committee, which provided microfinance loans to members; the zakat (alms-giving) committee, which provided money to poor members; the dawa committee, which comprised scholars and students who accompanied them on lectures; the economics committee, which solicited donations from wealthy people and the group’s own members to support dawa activities; an agricultural committee that harvested and sold crops; and a hisba committee that closed shops during prayers, ensured proper behavior during sermons, and prevented women from entering the group’s mosques and centers unless they wore full-body Islamic clothing.145 Further, the investigation committee monitored all committees and reported to the shura, which consisted of nine scholars who reported to the emir, Yusuf, implemented Yusuf’s orders, and reviewed Yusuf’s sermons for errors opponents could use to discredit him.146 The shura was also geographically diverse and reportedly included Katsina’s Abubakar Katsina, Sokoto’s Kabiru Sokoto, Kano’s Salisu Wudil, and

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Kanuri-speaking Abubakar Shekau and Mamman Nur with roots in Yobe and the Lake Chad subregion. The committees, therefore, demonstrated Boko Haram’s sophisticated organizational structure, pan-northern Nigerian scope, and respect for Yusuf, which helped the group survive the 2009 crackdown and relaunch jihad in 2010. Yusuf’s final committee was the awareness-raising committee (lejna al-tawiya) that recorded Yusuf’s sermons and distributed his books. This was important because the Nigerian Council of Ulama advised the Nigerian Television Authority not to air Yusuf’s preaching.147 Yusuf’s need to disseminate his own sermons, therefore, prompted his outreach to Ahmed Salkida, a young Borno-born journalist and convert to Islam. Salkida admired Yusuf’s “depth of knowledge, oratorical prowess and apparent willingness to emulate Prophet Muhammad” and understood Yusuf to have been Shaikh Jaafar’s “likely heir” because of his “brilliance and closeness” to Shaikh Jaafar until “all that changed” when Muhammed Ali convinced Yusuf to boycott democracy, civil service, and schools of Western education.148 Salkida indicated, therefore, that Ali played a role in Yusuf’s eventual separation from Izala by 2003. Although Yusuf wanted Salkida to publish newsletters for his followers like those Ibrahim al-Zakzaky’s IMN published, Yusuf dropped the idea when Salkida requested to include dissenting opinions. Nevertheless, Yusuf still treated Salkida like family, and Salkida received exclusive access to interview Yusuf and other Boko Haram members during Yusuf’s lifetime and after his death.149 One of Salkida’s first interviewees was Shekau, who stated, “Western education is like a pot of honey and when everyone begins to taste it a tray of feces is added and many Muslims decide to lick that filth with hope that, eventually, they may live to taste the bottom and benefit from the honey.”150 Yusuf also handed Salkida a 2006 press release from his shura stating the group could “subsist” under Nigeria’s government so long as followers never supported the government. However, Salkida observed that Yusuf still “never hid desire . . . to carry out jihad and ultimately secure a dawla” and that he was more knowledgeable and patient than Muhammed Ali.151 One of Yusuf’s followers even claimed Yusuf planned to wage jihad in 2015, but circumstances compelled Yusuf to fight prematurely in July 2009.152 Another Nigerian journalist similarly interviewed Yusuf after his return from Saudi Arabia and recalled Yusuf’s stating he would never “relent until an independent and just state devoid of anything haram was established.”153 However, Yusuf’s desire for jihad and a dawla contravened Nigerian government and Nigerian Salafis’ interests, including Ali Modu Sheriff and Izala, which caused tensions that led to the cataclysmic July 2009 clashes and Yusuf’s death. Yusuf, however, had psychologically prepared his followers for those clashes through his dawa—and his followers were ready for war when it commenced and continued after 2009.

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Intra-Salafi Debates With money from Yusuf’s Saudi contacts, father-in-law, and followers’ fundraising, by 2006 Yusuf had established centers in Borno, Bauchi, Kano, Yobe, and Sokoto in Nigeria and in Diffa, Niger. According to Abu Musab, “students from throughout Africa” studied at Yusuf’s Ibn Taymiyya mosque.154 However, most non-Nigerians were still from the Lake Chad subregion. Yusuf and Shekau preached in sessions and answered intimate questions from followers, including whether it was permissible to pray behind imams whose trousers were below the ankle or to have sexual intercourse during fasting.155 Nevertheless, their preaching was based on Wahhabi canon, which held that “anything which cannot be attested in the Quran or hadith is innovation, and needs to be excised.”156 This enabled them to thwart attempts to portray them as heretical. Abu Musab also noted that Yusuf explained to followers they were a fighting group (jamaa qatiliya) that would ensure the application of sharia through force of arms (qawa wal-salah) and that his “dawa was for jihad and not peaceful (la salmiya).”157 Not every Yusuf sermon was about jihad. However, despite his eclectic preaching, Yusuf’s followers’ understanding of his dawa’s purpose was evidenced when thousands of followers were prepared to wage jihad against Nigeria from July 2009 onward. Yusuf also distinguished himself from Izala by still condemning Western education, government service, voting, and Nigerian laws and symbols, similar to al-Zakzaky’s 1980 Funtua Declaration. Yusuf never, however, declared takfir indiscriminately, including on youths who received a Western education, arguing their parents were responsible for sending them to school.158 Kano-based shura member, Salisu Wudil, nevertheless argued, “one hundred churches are less dangerous than building one ‘boko’ school.” This was because Muslim parents never sent sons to churches, but sent them to schools of Western education, which made the latter more threatening.159 In June 2006 debates with Isa Ali Pantami in Bauchi, Yusuf also demonstrated restraint by claiming anyone declaring takfir on another person must ensure the accused’s beliefs and actions are not misinterpreted and the accused is afforded time for self-correction, which resembled arguments Yusuf made to Muhammed Ali in 2003.160 Yusuf’s debates with Pantami occurred after Shaikh Jaafar instructed Pantami to exploit his experience with Western education and Saudi theological training to counter Yusuf’s arguments and record the debates so concessions Yusuf made and flaws in Yusuf’s creed would be available for anyone to view.161 During debate they disagreed on most issues, and Pantami indicated Yusuf was unqualified to preach about Western education because Yusuf never stepped foot on university campuses, but Pantami was still respectful of Yusuf and did not corner him.162 However, Abu Musab wrote in his 2018 book that Pantami and other Salafi scholars only “babbled” with Yusuf, including, for example, over whether calling barristers “my lord” was shirk, whether a Saudi edict prohibited “foreign schools” in “a land of

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Muslims” or “the land of Muslims,” or whether various conditions could prevent Western education from being forbidden (“boko haram”), to confuse Yusuf and cause listeners to become “suspicious” of him.163 This is why Abu Musab prayed for “God hastening [Pantami’s] destruction” in his book and why, according to Abu Aisha, the moniker Boko Haram emerged in Bauchi despite Yusuf’s followers calling themselves Yusufiya.164 It apparently frustrated Yusuf that mainstream Salafi scholars found theological nuances to de facto permit participation in democracy and Western education whereas Yusuf decisively rejected participation under the constraints of Nigeria’s secular systems.165 Pantami, for example, would argue even if a university was not Islamic, it did not mean every subject taught in the university, such as medicine or engineering, was haram.166 Moreover, Pantami cited from the Quran the example of Prophet Joseph who served in an idolatrous government as evidence that services could be performed in an un-Islamic government if those services benefited the public and Muslims and did not contradict Islam.167 Yusuf’s arguments on jihad, democracy, and Western education were, however, difficult for Salafi scholars like Pantami to undermine because Saudi scholars frequently cited by them historically advocated al-Qaeda’s jihad and prohibited voting and even teaching the theory of evaporation.168 Astute Nigerian Salafi audiences would have been aware that Yusuf’s arguments maintained some Saudi scholarly support. Furthermore, Nigerian Salafi scholars who opposed Yusuf were disadvantaged by Nigeria’s 1999 shift from military to civilian rule. Before 1999, Saudi scholars’ prohibitions on voting, which were redundant in Saudi Arabia’s monarchical system, were relatively uncontroversial in Nigeria because there were few legitimate Nigerian elections.169 However, after democratization, Nigerian Salafi scholars found themselves following Abubakar Gumi’s footsteps and advocating voting in democratic elections even though there were fatwas from leading Salafi scholars in Saudi Arabia, including Abd al-Aziz bin Baz and Muhammad ibn al Uthaymeen, and in other countries, including Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani, prohibiting or at least discouraging voting in secular democracies.170 Contradictions between Nigerian Salafi scholars’ overt advocacy for voting in democratic elections and the world’s most distinguished Salafi scholars’ fatwas could, therefore, be exposed. Moreover, Nigerian Salafi scholars were hamstrung by their records of pro-al-Qaeda advocacy. In one sermon in 2006, Isa Ali Pantami, for example, offered condolences for the recent death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whom he considered a martyr.171 In addition, as late as 9/11’s fifth anniversary and three months after debating Yusuf, Pantami still praised “95 percent” of the Taliban for holding “the purest Islamic doctrine”; enforcing Islamic dress codes for men and women; and destroying the “idols of Buddha” in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, which Pantami hoped would be replicated by Nigeria’s removing “idolatrous images” from its currency and passports.

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He further encouraged his audience to read Abdullah Azzam’s book, Join the Caravan; stated Bin Laden was a “better Muslim than myself” despite acknowledging Bin Laden’s “liability to err”; and commended Mullah Umar for protecting Bin Laden after 9/11. Referring to the 2003 “Kanama affair,” Pantami argued Nigerians were still in preparation (isti‘dad) and must postpone jihad until Nigeria’s Islamic scholars approved jihad and Nigerian Muslims were ready for “a leader of Mullah Umar’s stature.”172 Pantami further faulted Kanama camp members’ zeal (hamasa) for rushing to jihad and exploiting admiration for the Taliban by abusing its name.173 Pantami’s sermons, which were almost certainly replicated by other preachers, including Yusuf, demonstrated how mainstream Salafis could not easily undermine Yusuf’s arguments about the legitimacy of al-Qaeda’s jihad, but only debate when, if ever, to wage jihad. Therefore, Ahmed Salkida observed, “a few moderate clerics challenged the doctrinal veracity” of Yusuf’s dawa “with vigor,” but “it did not go deep enough.”174 Indeed, if Yusuf’s dawa was for jihad, Pantami’s failure to discuss jihad in the debate with Yusuf meant the essence of Yusuf’s preaching remained unchallenged. Yusuf and Shekau could also accuse mainstream Salafis of being hypocrites and “government scholars” for their unwillingness to reject democracy despite their prior preaching against it. One example of this was in a pre2009 sermon where Shekau played an old audio recording of Shaikh Jaafar discussing Islam’s incompatibility with democracy and stated “we were just students” following those teachings.175 Shekau implied Shaikh Jaafar backtracked while Boko Haram continued preaching against democracy. The Pantami-Yusuf debate became a turning point by creating irreparable schisms between Yusuf and mainstream Salafi scholars and forcing Yusuf’s followers to choose sides. One follower, Muhammed Auwal Nuhu, for example, abandoned Yusuf and sided with Pantami.176 However, Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi, Shekau, Mamman Nur, and Pantami’s protégé who became Ansaru’s first leader, Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe, sided with Yusuf. So acrimonious was the split that al-Bauchi’s father, an Izala member, and al-Bauchi’s father-in-law disowned him, causing his wife to divorce him.177 Al-Bauchi’s uncle, Yakubu Musa, ironically, was also disowned decades earlier by his own Sufi uncle when he became a Salafi. However, by withstanding challenges from Pantami and other respected Bauchi-based Salafi scholars debating him, including Idris Abdulaziz, Yusuf earned admiration from his followers and affirmed Nigerian Salafi scholars could not undermine him. Perceptions of Security By 2007, there was little expectation that a repeat of Kanama camp events could occur despite Yusuf’s preaching and some Nigerians’ training with

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AQIM. The non-convictions of Boko Haram members or financiers exemplified the government’s lack of urgency. In 2006, for example, Abubakar Kambar, described as Yusuf’s “close ally,” was arrested with four members of his Kano-based cell after returning from Mali, which apparently contributed to SSS suspicions later that year that Yusuf had “al-Qaeda links.”178 US officials learned Kambar was the intermediary bringing Nigerians to the Sahel for GSPC trainings.179 The threat from Kambar’s cell prompted US travel warnings about “Western interests at risk for a terrorist attack” in Lagos and Abuja, indicating Kambar’s targets resembled those of Ibrahim Harun.180 Kambar’s cell may have also been part of AQIM’s strategy to prove itself to al-Qaeda after the GSPC’s January 2007 rebranding as AQIM because an AQIM front group concurrently began mounting a new multiweek attack campaign in AQIM’s East zone, referring to Tunisia.181 Although Kambar’s cell was uncovered before it launched operations, if his cell had succeeded, it would have boosted AQIM’s credentials in South zone, referring to the Sahel. Shaikh Albani also claimed an Algerian approached him about joining the jihad during protests against Danish cartoons that blasphemed Prophet Muhammad in 2006, but he refused, and it was also around this time Yusuf received “foreign visitors” and agreed to observe them.182 This indicates AQIM was developing new inroads in Nigeria. The SSS claimed Kambar’s cell members traveled to Algeria and “many countries in the Middle East” and were “linked to al-Qaeda groups” in Afghanistan and Pakistan.183 A journalist who met Kambar in his Kano hideout in 2012 also stated Kambar developed communication lines to alZawahiri through “only one intermediary” before 2009, which, however, may have alienated Kambar from Khalid al-Barnawi, who venerated Bin Laden but was reportedly suspicious of al-Zawahiri.184 Despite Kambar’s training with AQIM and plots in Abuja and Lagos, SSS claims about his cell, and “overwhelming” and “undeniable” evidence against him, Kambar and his cell members were granted bail after initially being refused it.185 In addition, twelve of Kambar’s Kano-based recruits were released into deradicalization programs led by imams and approved reluctantly by the SSS.186 The trial of Kambar’s cell and recruits occurred concurrently with trials of Muhammed Bello Ilyas Damagun, accused of sponsoring Muhammed Yusuf in 2003, funding seventeen students for the Mauritania training program in 2003, and providing Yusuf—“leader of the ‘Nigerian Taliban’”—with buses and loudspeakers, and Muhammed Ashafa, accused of hosting Ibrahim Harun, sending twenty-one youths for GSPC training, and liaising between Ibrahim Harun and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda.187 However, like Kambar’s cell and recruits, charges against Damagun and Ashafa were dropped. Harun’s 2011 arrest in Italy, however, apparently led the SSS to reopen Ashafa’s case and he was rearrested.188 Kambar, meanwhile, exploited bail to rejoin AQIM.

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Ultimately Nigeria’s government convicted virtually nobody, including Yusuf, for Kanama camp involvement or terrorism. One reason for this was that Nigeria’s terrorism legislation made convicting suspects for joining, training with, or funding terrorist groups difficult.189 Not until Britaineducated Nigerian youth Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, whose father served on the board of Nigeria’s first Islamic bank with Nafiu Baba-Ahmed, Muhammed Ndimi, and Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, attempted to detonate an underwear bomb on a US-bound airplane on Christmas Eve in 2009 under Anwar al-Awlaki’s guidance did Nigeria develop new counterterrorism legislation. This was intended to persuade the United States to drop Nigeria from its Terror Watch List after Abdulmutallab’s failed operation, which meant the United States could easily revoke Nigerians’ visas.190 Before 2009, counterterrorism legislation was stalled by northern politicians who argued it would be “anti-Muslim” and southern politicians who were concerned it would conflate al-Qaeda’s bombings targeting civilians with pipeline sabotage caused by Niger Delta militants like Mujahid Dokubo-Asari.191 Another reason why suspects like Kambar, Damagun, and Ashafa were not convicted was that Nigeria’s government faced pressure from the SCSN and Damagun’s Daily Trust newspaper to avoid prosecuting Muslims for terrorism.192 After Kambar’s trial, for example, SCSN deputy Nafiu BabaAhmed alleged not only insufficient evidence was presented at trials but also “the state’s machinery . . . demonized Nigerian Muslims” and the SSS “set up ordinary people” and “parroted America’s script.”193 Shaikh Jaafar similarly declared Damagun’s arrest a “witch hunt” and Nigeria a US “errand boy.”194 US officials further noted judicial corruption and ineffective police “exacerbated the government’s inability to prosecute terrorism cases.”195 Alhaji Buji Foi even reportedly requested Ali Modu Sheriff help release Kambar on bail before their falling out.196 Besides Nigeria’s failing to convict anyone and US travel warnings for Nigeria, few in academic or religious circles in Nigeria or abroad considered Boko Haram could one day wage warfare with sophisticated tactics. This was reflected in the sultan of Sokoto’s November 2007 speech at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, stating there was “no al-Qaeda or Taliban” in Nigeria.197 Similarly, US officials met in March 2007 with Maiduguri-based Sufi scholar Ibrahim Saleh, who stated Muslim-Christian tensions and “the culture of takfir” were disconcerting but affirmed the “Bin Laden phenomenon” was “short-lived.”198 One month later, US officials also met Kano-based Aminudeen Abubakar, who stated the “appeal of Bin Laden died out long ago” and allegations the “Nigerian Taliban” conducted an April 17, 2007, attack in Kano were “fabricated or exaggerated.”199 However, that attack, Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination on April 13, 2007, and another attack in Kano before the assassination demonstrated the late Muhammed Ali’s loyalists’ commitment to jihad.

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By 2007, Ali’s followers now under Yusuf’s overall leadership were still eager for revenge against Shaikh Jaafar for condoning Kanama camp’s destruction. Yet, the showdown they sought would inevitably awaken Yusuf’s scholarly and government enemies from complacency about the potential for Boko Haram to rise again. Therefore, Nigeria’s government, security forces, and Muslim establishment attempted to destroy Boko Haram once and for all after Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination. This led to the July 2009 security forces operation that was far deadlier than the one at Kanama. Notes

1. Musa, “Two Nigerians.” 2. Lagos Insider, “Terror Camp”; Musa, “Two Nigerians”; Damagum, “Tough Love.” 3. The Week, “Apostles of Terror.” 4. Musa, “Two Nigerians.” 5. Omipidan, “How Yusuf.” 6. Habibsons Bank (Habib Bank UK). 7. Ughegbe, “Govt Arraigns”; Reuters, “Nigerian Muslim Cleric”; Agbo, “Bin Laden’s Men”; US District Court, USA v. Abdurahman; Islamic Human Rights Commission, “Action on Kosova”; Dar, “Pakistani Banks.” 8. Muhammed, “Contemporary Islamic Learning,” 221. For another case of “businessmen” funding al-Shabaab-related trainings in 2006, see Lahoud, “Beware of Imitators,” 85–86. 9. Ughegbe, “Govt Arraigns”; Sani, “Boko Haram”; al-Hindi, “Comment”; Maaly discussion. 10. Al-Libi and al-Libi, “On the Passing”; Zelin, “Purifying Islam.” 11. Attiya al-Libi, “Responses”; Lahoud et al., “Letters from Abbottabad,” 2. 12. Mad Mamluks Podcast, “On a Highway,” 9:55, 34:00. 13. Salem discussion. 14. Z. O. A. Salem, “Mutations,” 651–652. 15. Maaly, “Dialogue.” 16. US Embassy Abuja, “Spot Report”; The Week, “Apostles of Terror.” 17. Walker, “Al-Qaeda.” 18. Abu Aisha seems to have referenced circumstances surrounding the failed June 2003 coup attempt against Mauritanian president Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya, who was later overthrown in a 2005 coup when he was in Niger. Aisha interview, 2019. 19. Ibid. 20. Salkida, Twitter, April 9, 2014; Sani, “Boko Haram.” 21. Al-Ansari, “Message from Nigeria,” 19. 22. Salkida, “Genesis and Consequences”; Sani, “Boko Haram”; Agence France-Presse, “Islamic Group Kills.” 23. Brigaglia, “Slicing Off the Tumour,” 208. 24. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 92. 25. The book was written by “two sons” of Muhammed Yusuf, but appears to have been written by Abu Musab. He also avoided referring to himself as Muhammed Yusuf’s son in other communications. 26. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 23; Nigerian Voice, “Details.” 27. Pantami interview. 28. Aisha interview, 2017. 29. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 13. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid.; Lahoud, “Beware of Imitators,” 42; Seesemann, “Takfir Debate,” 73. 32. Al-Tartusi, “Interview.” 33. Lahoud, “Beware of Imitators,” 43. 34. M. M. Ibrahim, “Matsayin,” 6. 35. Aisha interview, 2018.

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36. ICG, “Curbing Violence,” 9. 37. Aisha interview, 2019. 38. Sani, “Boko Haram.” 39. Borzello, “Tracking Down.” 40. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 13. 41. Brigaglia, “Slicing Off the Tumour,” 205; Yusuf, “Hadhihi,” 37. 42. Anonymous, “Popular Discourses,” 133–134. 43. Thurston, Boko Haram, 102. 44. Thirteenth-century Sunni theologian from present-day Turkey and Syria who influenced contemporary Wahhabism. 45. Nigerian Voice, “Details.” 46. News24, “Calls for ‘Total’ Sharia.” 47. Pantami interview. 48. Ochonu, “Modernity and Morality.” 49. Dumbe, “Transnational Contacts,” 315. 50. Riyadhul Qur’an Islamic School, “One”; Kane, Muslim Modernity, 208–210. 51. Thescoopng.com, “I Am Satisfied.” 52. Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria, “Meeting.” 53. Today.ng, “JIBWIS Chair.” 54. Kane, Muslim Modernity, 216; ThisDay, “Buhari.” 55. Possibly mistaken for “Babagana” in ICG, “Curbing Violence,” 23. 56. Anonymous former Ansaru associate interview. 57. Pantami interview; K. Mohammed, “Origins,” 589. 58. Thurston, “Muslim Politics,” 45. 59. Hamoud al-Aqla al-Shuebi died of natural causes in 2001. Los Angeles Times, “Saudis Arrest 21.” 60. Hegghammer, “Saudis in Iraq,” 3. 61. Ibid. 62. Amghar, “Muslim World League,” 138. 63. Brigaglia, “Popular Discourses,” 17. 64. Ibid., 21. 65. Brigaglia, “Volatility,” 195. 66. Aisha interview, 2019. 67. Sani, “Boko Haram.” 68. Ibid. 69. Bego, “‘Taliban’ of Nigeria”; Oshunkeye, “Big Hunt.” 70. The Week, “Apostles of Terror.” 71. Oropo, “How Talibans Recruit.” 72. Omonobi, “Attacks”; Al Jazeera, “Nigeria Arrests.” 73. Bego, “‘Taliban’ of Nigeria.” 74. Opakunle discussion. 75. Harnischfeger, “9/11 in Nigeria,” 2. 76. Agence France-Presse, “Muslim Cult.” 77. Brigaglia, “Popular Discourses,” 15. 78. Borzello, “Tracking Down.” 79. Oshunkeye, “Big Hunt.” 80. ICG, “Curbing Violence,” 23. 81. Ibid. 82. Pantami interview; Agence France-Presse, “Hunters Kill Seven”; Oshunkeye, “Big Hunt.” 83. Aisha interview, 2018. 84. Possibly Mallam Rabiu Afghani mentioned in Chapter 2. 85. Aisha interview, 2019. 86. Al-Ansari, “Message from Nigeria,” 19; Oshunkeye, “Big Hunt.” 87. Aisha interview, 2019. 88. Pantami interview. 89. Aisha interview, 2019. 90. IS, “Davet ve cihad,” 35.

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91. Oropo, “How Talibans Recruit.” 92. Thurston, Salafism in Nigeria, 106–110; Majalasin, “Daga Majlisin.” 93. Kassim, “Boko Haram’s Internal,” 11; Abulfathi, “Metamorphosis.” 94. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 39 95. As-Sawarim, “Interview.” 96. Walker, “What Is Boko Haram?,” 3; Brigaglia, “Volatility,” 195; BH, “Sermons Collection,” 4. 97. Anonymous former Ansaru associate interview. 98. Aisha interview, 2019. 99. Anonymous former Ansaru associate interview. 100. Anonymous former Ansaru associate interview; Brigaglia, “Ja‘far Mahmoud Adam,” 36. 101. Buhari, “Islamic Body.” 102. Ahiante, “Police Arrest.” 103. Vanguard, “Talibans Attack.” 104. US Embassy Abuja, “Nigerian ‘Taliban’”; US Embassy Abuja, “Nigeria: 2004.” 105. Agence France-Presse, “Nigerian ‘Taliban Group.’” 106. Idris, “Now, Senators.” 107. Gojon and Abubakar, “Nigeria’s ‘Taliban.’” 108. Adeniyi, Power, 74; Salkida, “Genesis and Consequences”; Sani, “Boko Haram.” 109. Gojon and Abubakar, “Nigeria’s ‘Taliban.’” 110. Aisha interview, 2019. 111. Nasrullah discussion; Ahmed, “Homegrown Terrorism,” 8; AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 15. 112. Al-Ansari, “Message from Nigeria,” 19. 113. Nasrullah, Twitter, April 2, 2016. 114. Aisha interview, 2019. 115. Aisha interview, 2017. 116. Salem, Ben Laden, 112. 117. Ibid.; Fowler, “My 130 Days.” 118. Africa Confidential, “Abuja’s Foreign Legion.” 119. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 18–19. 120. Nasrullah discussion. 121. Agence France-Presse, “Barnawi”; ANI, “Mort des deux.” 122. Maaly, “Dialogue.” 123. AP, “Al-Qaida Papers: A Disciplinary Letter,” 4. 124. Ibid. 125. Ibid., 9; Maaly, “Dialogue.” 126. Fowler, “My 130 Days.” 127. US Embassy Bamako, “Liberation.” 128. Nossiter, “New Threat.” 129. Ibid. 130. AQIM, “Report,” 4–5. 131. New York Times, “Interview.” 132. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 24. 133. US Embassy Abuja, “Nigeria: Borno.” 134. Agence France-Presse, “Security Agents.” 135. Walker, “AlQaeda”; Reuters, “Nigerian Muslim Cleric”; UN High Commissioner, “Country Reports.” 136. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 23. 137. Omipidan, “How Yusuf”; Shibayan, “B’Haram Founder.” 138. Punch, “Boko Haram Leader”; Shibayan, “B’Haram Founder.” 139. US Embassy Abuja, “Nigeria: Borno”; see also Abulfathi, “Metamorphosis.” 140. US Embassy Abuja, “Nigeria: Borno.” 141. Radio Jigawa, “Security Agents.” 142. Idris, “Now, Senators.” 143. Thurston, Boko Haram, 139. 144. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 25. 145. Salkida, “Muhammad Yusuf Teaching.”

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146. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 24. 147. US Embassy Abuja, “Nigeria: Borno.” 148. Salkida, “Genesis and Consequences.” 149. Ynaija, “I Am Not a Member.” 150. Salkida, “Muhammad Yusuf Teaching.” 151. Salkida, Twitter, April 9, 2014; Salkida, Twitter, November 1, 2014. 152. As-Sawarim, “Interview.” 153. Nigerian Voice, “Details.” 154. BH, “Sermons,” 4. 155. The answer was no for both. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 63. 156. Ibid., 2. 157. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 14–15. 158. Ibid., 19. 159. Ibid., 18. 160. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 11; Yusuf, “Debate.” 161. Pantami interview. 162. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 16. 163. Ibid, 16, 24; Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 21. 164. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 21; Aisha interview, 2017. 165. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 21. 166. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 12. 167. Ibid., 19. 168. Brigaglia, “Volatility,” 192, 197; Anonymous, “Popular Discourses,” 125. 169. Brigaglia, “Volatility,” 192, 197. 170. Wakili, “Islam and the Political Arena,” 3. 171. Brigaglia, “Popular Discourses,” 17–19. 172. Ibid. 173. Ibid. 174. Salkida, “Another Look.” 175. Shekau, “Shekau da Jaafar.” 176. Pantami interview. 177. Ibid. 178. Agence France-Presse, “Barnawi”; BBC, “Five Nigerians”; Agbo, “Bin Laden’s Men”; Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 23. 179. US Embassy Abuja, “Nigeria: Terrorism.” 180. UN High Commissioner, “Country Reports.” 181. Zelin, “Not Gonna Be Able,” 64. 182. Brigaglia, “Ja‘far Mahmoud Adam,” 41. 183. Agence France-Presse, “Director Says.” 184. Anonymous journalist interviewing Abubakar Kambar interview; Nasrullah, Twitter, April 2, 2016. 185. US Embassy Abuja, “Nigerian Terror Suspects”; US Embassy Abuja, “Nigeria: Terrorism.” 186. US Embassy Abuja, “Nigeria: Terrorism.” 187. Agbo, “Bin Laden’s Men”; Vanguard, “FG Arraigns Nigerian Leader.” 188. US Embassy Abuja, “Spot Report.” 189. Sharpedgenews.com, “Nigerian Court.” 190. Sahara Reporters, “Terror Watch List.” 191. Eboh, “Nigeria Senate.” 192. Ughegbe, “Govt Arraigns.” 193. Buhari, “Islamic Body”; BBC, “Nigerian Media Man”; Baba-Ahmed interview. 194. KanoCTV, “Muslim Cleric.” 195. US Embassy Abuja, “Nigeria: Terrorism.” 196. Africa Confidential, “How Politicians Help Insurgents.” 197. Ikokwu, “No Proof.” 198. US Embassy Abuja, “Amin Chairman.” 199. US Embassy Abuja, “Shaykh Minimizes Militancy.”

6 Mobilizing for Battle

Several weeks before Nigeria’s April 2007 elections, Kano residents noticed newcomers in the city who they suspected were from rural Borno or Chad because some did not speak Hausa or Arabic or were from AQIM, the “Nigerian Taliban,” or “Maitatsine remnants.”1 The first indication of the newcomers’ militancy was on April 11, 2007, when a “prime suspect” from Niger led militants who called themselves “Taliban” and “alQaeda” to attack a police station in Kano’s Sharada district, killing two officers and stealing guns.2 Their motive was unknown. However, the attack forced international election observers to cancel their mission in Kano and preceded another attack in Kano two days later: the assassination at al-Muntada Mosque of Shaikh Jaafar, who was subsequently eulogized at Mecca’s Great Mosque.3 Concurrent with the assassination, in Kaduna, Boko Haram members shot an informant to Shaikh Jaafar and Nigerian authorities but failed to kill him, while other reported “Nigerian Taliban” members were arrested at Kaduna checkpoints.4 The informant may have been Bulama Shuaibu, who, according to charges against Abubakar Kambar, was shot by Kambar but survived. US officials observing Kambar’s 2007 trial also learned Bulama Shuaibu held information that could prove Kambar’s guilt for heading the AQIM cell in Kano. 5 According to Abu Aisha, Mudashiru, whom Muhammed Ashafa sent to GSPC camps, later tried to assassinate Bulama Shuaibu, but he failed, and it was not until 2010 that Boko Haram finally killed him.6 The group suspected that Bulama Shuaibu informed not only on Kanama camp but also on Boko Haram members who were returning from AQIM trainings and bringing weapons into Nigeria, possibly including those used in April 2007.7

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The Sharada attack and assassination of Shaikh Jaafar were followed by a larger April 17 attack on a police station in Kano’s Panshekera district, reportedly launched by more than 100 militants speaking Kano’s Hausa dialect, French, and Arabic.8 Some attackers’ Lake Chad subregion origins and militant capabilities resembled the former Kanama camp members operating in rural Borno and around Lake Chad in September and October 2004 but now with support from Kano-based collaborators and urban combat skill. The Panshekera attack, for instance, led to the deaths of ten police officers and one officer’s wife but also twenty-five militants.9 Not until 2015 did ISWAP claim responsibility for the Panshekera attack in an IS Turkishlanguage magazine.10 Boko Haram was, therefore, involved in these attacks in Kano in April 2007, but the attacks reflected the influence of followers of late Muhammed Ali more than those of Muhammed Yusuf. Reexamining Shaikh Jaafar’s Assassination Accounts about Muhammed Yusuf indicated unless he was highly deceptive, he was uninvolved in Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination. Yusuf, for example, attended Shaikh Jaafar’s funeral in Kano and expressed condolences. However, Izala preacher Abdulwahhab Abdullah, who previously debated Yusuf, was suspicious and chided Yusuf, forcing his departure. 11 Boko Haram also never claimed Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination in Yusuf’s name. Abu Musab instead claimed in his book that the “Kanama Taliban led by one called Muhammed Ali” assassinated Shaikh Jaafar. 12 This implied veteran Kanama camp hard-liners conducted the assassination despite rejoining Yusuf’s followership. Further evidence Yusuf was uninvolved relates to December 3, 2014, correspondence to an IS media activist from Boko Haram’s Abu Musab–led media team disclaiming the assassination. The media team wrote that Izala “accused us of killing their leader Shaikh Jaafar” but that was “a lie” and the group only “disavowed him for entering the religion of democracy.”13 Boko Haram again dismissed responsibility for the assassination, despite repudiating Shaikh Jaafar. A new hypothesis, therefore, is that the late Muhammed Ali’s followers conducted the assassination and the two Kano police station attacks surrounding it. However, Yusuf did not support the assassination or other April 2007 attacks in Kano or necessarily know about them beforehand because late Ali’s followers, including some training with AQIM, comprised a “Kanama Taliban” faction within Yusuf’s broader following but not always reporting to Yusuf. Supporting this hypothesis was a police special instructor in Bauchi, using the pseudonym Datty Assalafiy, who frequently provided exclusive information about Boko Haram by, for example, releasing photographs of ISWAP commanders who were killed by Abubakar Shekau,

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including Moustapha Chad, Abu Mujahid, and Abu Maryam, whose activities are discussed further in Chapter 10.14 Intending to exonerate Kano’s former governor from accusations that he ordered Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination because he feared Shaikh Jaafar would urge voters to oppose him, Datty Assalafiy alleged Shaikh Jaafar’s assassin was Ibrahim Uquba al-Muhajir,15 whose photograph in military attire he released online.16 Ibrahim Uquba al-Muhajir joined Muhammed Ali’s followers at Kanama camp and retreated from Kanama to the Sahel to train with the GSPC in 2004. He returned to Nigeria at around the same time that Abubakar Kambar returned to Kano and commanded the cell that assassinated Shaikh Jaafar before mixing with fighters who conducted the Panshekera attack and retreated to the Sahel again.17 Accordingly, Ibrahim Uquba al-Muhajir’s escape from Kano benefited from the confusion surrounding the two police station attacks, and he exploited the cover of Nigeria’s April 14 elections to conduct Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination as revenge for Ali’s death. It is unclear why after a hiatus since 2004 Boko Haram members would suddenly attack Kano police stations without provocation unless assassinating Shaikh Jaafar was the primary objective. While revenge was sufficient motivation for the late Ali’s followers like Ibrahim Uquba al-Muhajir to assassinate Shaikh Jaafar, there may have been other conspirators.18 Weeks before April 2007 and in the final sermon before his assassination, Shaikh Jaafar threatened to reveal Muhammed Yusuf’s sponsors by rhetorically asking, “Who is sponsoring him? Let him explain where his money comes from. There are certain things it’s not time to disclose yet, but their time will come.” Shaikh Jaafar further explained “intelligence services” had “hidden agendas” and the United States “takes somebody on their payroll to do dirty work. . . . Maybe this is all I can say for now.”19 From that sermon, it appears Shaikh Jaafar would have disclosed Yusuf was funded by the CIA or US-backed Nigerian Christians, or both, to impede Nigerian Muslims. Shaikh Jaafar often implied Yusuf was an “American agent,” which Boko Haram’s media team mentioned in the December 3, 2014, correspondence to IS.20 However, there may have been other reasons Shaikh Jaafar would have offered to explain Yusuf’s rapid rise after returning from Saudi Arabia implicating those with “hidden agendas” and “who are not from our country.” Another understanding of Shaikh Jaafar’s intended meaning was that Yusuf had foreign donors who coordinated with the United States. In 2004, for example, al-Muntada al-Islami, MWL, IIRO, WAMY, and another Islamic charity, al-Haramain, formed the Friends of Charities Association to lobby the US government after post-9/11 terrorism financing restrictions delayed their operations, which al-Muntada al-Islami’s Kano-based Sudanese director acknowledged to Agence France-Presse when explaining why he repaid loans

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to Alhaji Haruna Sharu, mentioned in Chapter 3.21 These charities subsequently increased cooperation with Western authorities and Saudi Arabia, especially after the latter’s May 2003 crackdown on Saudi scholars and Islamic charities.22 By 2012, when Britain’s Parliament considered investigating al-Muntada al-Islami for financing Boko Haram during the Kanama camp period, for example, the charity was in such high regard that plans were dropped and it was exonerated.23 This could have appeared to Shaikh Jaafar by 2007 as if Islamic charity donors, such as the “Salafi contacts” who provided Yusuf funds in Saudi Arabia in 2004 and during his prior pilgrimages, were influenced by US intelligence and “controlling the affairs” of Yusuf.24 Despite being closed in Nigeria and Chad, al-Muntada al-Islami was operating again in both countries by 2007. In Chad, however, local employees reportedly formed a new charity, operating without government oversight and receiving Qatari funding.25 In February 2007, two months before Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination, Chad’s grand imam, Sufi-leaning Shaikh Hussein Hassan Abakar, requested the United States assist Chad “to investigate possible terrorist and extremist financing” through Ahmed Mahamat Haggar, the head of Chad’s Izala equivalent, Ansar al-Sunna.26 Abakar alleged Haggar received funds from two private Saudis: Salih Omar Badhadih, a WAMY secretariat member and former University of Colorado professor; and Khaled al-Touwil, whose background was seemingly unknown.27 According to Abakar, al-Muntada al-Islami and WAMY, whose West Africa representative was Haggar, had been “attempting, for some time, to bring extremist Islamic ideologies and practices to Chad.”28 Therefore, if Islamic charity donors financed Kanama camp and intended to finance Muhammed Ali, then similar donors might have still been involved in funding and communicating with late Ali’s followers by April 2007, including those in Kano.29 Moreover, if Shaikh Jaafar threatened to expose those donors, as Abakar did privately to the United States, then those donors might have had incentives to silence Shaikh Jaafar. These donors may have been “Salafi contacts” who aided Yusuf in Saudi Arabia in 2004 and provided money to him before his return to Nigeria; or connected to al-Qaeda members on the Arabian Peninsula who were providing funds intended for Muhammed Ali after 9/11; or the donors who funded the GSPC agent, Alhaji Haruna Sharu, who then transferred funds to Boko Haram before the Kanama camp clashes. Shaikh Jaafar could have learned about these funding channels before Kanama camp’s fall, while in Saudi Arabia concurrently with Yusuf in 2004, from communications with Saudi officials who were communicating with the SSS and Nigerian government to facilitate Yusuf’s return to Nigeria, or from informants like Bulama Shuaibu. The possibility that Yusuf received funding from Saudi donors before returning to Nigeria is also implied by the “opulent” lifestyle he began leading and rapid growth of his mosque network in several north-

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ern Nigerian cities and Diffa, Niger, immediately after returning to Nigeria in 2004, which Nigeria-based followers and donors alone, including Alhaji Baba Fugu Muhammed, may not have been able to provide.30 Shaikh Jaafar revealed in his final sermon some knowledge of Yusuf’s returning from Saudi Arabia with bags of cash: “At that time, every airplane was being closely monitored [to arrest Yusuf] but he landed [in Nigeria] and nothing was done.”31 Here, Shaikh Jaafar seems to have referenced deals Yusuf made with Nigerian authorities who allowed Yusuf’s arrival at the airport without having his bags inspected.32 Shaikh Jaafar may have tolerated these deals expecting Yusuf would not continue preaching against mainstream Salafis, but he felt it necessary to expose these deals by April 2007 when he understood he was deceived by Yusuf and Yusuf’s creed from before Kanama camp’s fall never changed. Alternatively, Shaikh Jaafar may have expected Yusuf’s arrest at the airport, as Abba Aji warned Yusuf might occur. However, when Yusuf arrived in Nigeria and “nothing was done,” Shaikh Jaafar may have suspected Nigerian officials deceived him and the time was ripe to expose those officials, Yusuf, and Yusuf’s sponsors. The idea that foreign actors conspired in Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination was also put forward by Shaikh Albani in 2009, when he cryptically asserted that Islamic scholars who received “assistance from outside the country, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran . . . to build mosques for you for free have their own agenda.” He regretted the “late Jaafar . . . may have suffered his fate because he received support from a few international organizations to build mosques and schools . . . and this brought some problems for him.” Shaikh Albani implied Saudi donors of Islamic charities, mosques, and schools and “Yusuf’s followers,” who he stated were “prime suspects,” assassinated Shaikh Jaafar.33 However, as discussed subsequently, Yusuf’s Kano-based shura member, Salisu Wudil, was more likely to have conspired in Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination than Yusuf himself. No official account has been recorded about Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination, and it has remained unresolved. Despite Yusuf’s likely being uninvolved, Boko Haram eventually became viewed as responsible, although Salafi scholars like Isa Ali Pantami have since recognized that late Ali’s followers assassinated Shaikh Jaafar.34 The assassination also widened the gap between Boko Haram and Nigerian Salafis. With Ali Modu Sheriff and mainstream Salafis allied against Yusuf, he suspected there were conspiracies to undermine him. He concluded waging jihad was the only response to the pressure he was facing. Preaching for Jihad After Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination, Yusuf, his second-in-command Shekau, and third-in-command Mamman Nur, began their final preaching phase

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before waging jihad. In early 2008 sermons, Yusuf, therefore, prepared his fighters spiritually for jihad, encouraging fasting, night prayer, donating money to the group to “gain entry to paradise,” and reemphasizing his core theology: “The Constitution is polytheism . . . democracy is polytheism . . . obeying the flag they hoist is polytheism . . . those National Assembly legislators are all polytheists. Brothers! If we do not disavow them, Allah will not accept your Islam!”35 Convinced of his righteousness, Yusuf stated, “we have been interpreting the Quran together for almost fifteen years [since 1993] and nobody ever showed us a verse we misinterpreted.” He also indicated those who parted from him in Izala never proved him wrong.36 According to Abu Aisha, Yusuf even told followers if his sermons could be televised everyone in Borno would follow him within one year.37 However, Yusuf noted a paradox whereby “the Jews,” the evangelical Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), and the United States, which “attacked Tora Bora [Afghanistan],” were not considered a threat in Nigeria, but “this preaching constitutes a threat.”38 Yusuf could not understand why his followers, but not Islam’s “enemies,” were considered threats. By spring 2008, Yusuf prepared his followers to “face similar trials” as Prophet Muhammad’s seventh-century companions and narrated accounts of Libya’s Umar Mukhtar,39 who was executed in 1931 after refusing bribes to collaborate with Italian colonizers. Yusuf foresaw that becoming his fate. Referring to himself in third person, he predicted, “one day you will see him on the table [of the security forces]. We know this trial will happen, and it is not humiliation.”40 Yusuf may have only received basic education, but his ability to analogize historical and current events demonstrated he was neither ignorant nor provincial. Yusuf also condemned Nigerian Islamic scholars who discouraged his preaching about jihad and who stated, “this is not a period of jihad.” Similar to the December 3, 2014, correspondence from Boko Haram’s Abu Musab–led media team to IS’s media activist claiming Izala “saw jihad as something destructive for Muslims,” Yusuf stated in a spring 2008 sermon that some Islamic scholars “criticize us for always reciting jihad verses” of the Quran and argue “voting in elections is a form of jihad.” Yusuf conceded there were “other forms of jihad,” including “women wearing hijab” and “building Islamic schools.” However, he rejected elections as a form of jihad and postponing jihad further. He alluded to the 1988 statement by Abubakar Gumi’s former student and future King Faisal Prize recipient, Ahmed Lemu, whose British wife, Aisha Lemu, headed Nigeria’s first organization devoted to Muslim women’s political, economic, and social advancement, about men’s taking their wives to vote for Muslim leaders being “a sort of political jihad.”41 Instead, Yusuf rhetorically asked followers, “Is Allah referring to political jihad? No!”42 Yusuf implied his followers would wage violent jihad.

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Recordings of Shaikh Jaafar’s mid-1990s sermons are no longer readily available. However, Yusuf’s aggressiveness must have resembled mid-1990s Shaikh Jaafar, whose discourses, like other Nigerian Salafis, including Isa Ali Pantami, and some pre-9/11 Saudi-educated African preachers, including Uganda’s Jamil Mukulu and Kenya’s Abdulaziz Rimo, “laid ground favorable for advancing jihadi ideology” even though, like Rimo (but unlike Mukulu), Shaikh Jaafar and Isa Ali Pantami “did not engage in armed struggle.”43 Rimo eventually became ascetic. However, he lived to regret that his mentee, pro-al-Shabaab Kenyan preacher Aboud Rogo, went on to mentor al-Shabaab’s first Kenyan commander, Ahmed Iman Ali, and Rogo advocated violent jihad to establish an Islamic state in Kenya “at any cost.”44 Shaikh Jaafar similarly calmed his rhetoric in the years before his death but lived to see his protégé, Yusuf (Rogo’s analogue), advocate violent jihad and deputize Nigeria’s future most notorious jihadist commander, Shekau (Ahmed Iman Ali’s analogue). Pantami also lived to see his estranged protégé, Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe, lead Ansaru until Boko Haram killed Gombe, discussed in subsequent chapters. Although Rogo was more exposed to jihadist networks than Yusuf through hosting his cousin-in-law, Bin Laden’s Comorian confidential secretary (amin sirr) Fadil Harun, before al-Qaeda’s 1998 Kenya and Tanzania US embassy bombings, both Yusuf and Rogo might have become jihadist commanders if they were not executed extrajudicially in 2009 and 2013 in Maiduguri and Mombasa.45 Yusuf’s rhetoric also resembled Ahlussunnah’s when he placed Nigeria’s localized Muslim-Christian clashes, including in Kafanchan and ZangoKataf, in global context and compared them to “what happens in Palestine, Kashmir, and what happened in Chechnya.” Yusuf then rhetorically asked followers, “Did that not enrage you?” and declared, “You won’t heal from this anger until you wage jihad.” He also explained the “virtues of martyrdom” and how during the Afghan jihad, martyrs’ corpses “became fresh as new after two weeks.”46 Yusuf’s words indicated he read Afghan jihad literature, including Abdullah Azzam’s book about miracles during the Afghan jihad, which discussed martyrs’ bodies “exuding the fragrance of musk” long after their deaths.47 According to Yusuf, the only “reason scholars are hostile to us is they don’t want jihad to become reality.”48 Like pan-Islamists, Yusuf linked historical and current world events to Nigerian Muslims’ struggles, but Yusuf additionally repudiated Salafi scholars like Isa Ali Pantami who talked about jihad but indefinitely postponed waging jihad. By summer 2008, Yusuf identified legitimate targets for violence, including evangelical Christians who were proselytizing Muslims and building churches, Western governments, Muslim leaders who advocated democracy, and Nigeria’s government and army “that do not protect Islam.” Yusuf asserted, “Allah says you should kill them . . . to be honest, there is no other interpretation I know.”49 These targets would later be consistent with AQIM’s

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advice to Boko Haram after Yusuf’s death and Ansaru’s targeting. However, Shekau deviated from this advice by including virtually anyone who did not recognize his leadership as legitimate targets, including Muslim civilians. Given Shekau’s importance in leading Boko Haram after Yusuf’s death and his becoming the notorious face of Nigerian jihadism thereafter, it is worth examining his upbringing. He was born to poor parents in Shekau village, Yobe.50 According to his mother, Shekau’s father, like Yusuf’s, was an imam, and Shekau was an almajiri student.51 However, Shekau stated in a February 2009 sermon that he once attended school in Damatru, Yobe, and learned English. Employing his signature parody, he recalled children’s songs mocking Western education, stating, “In Class 1 he’s stupid, Class 2 he’s stupid, Class 3 he’s stupid, Class 4 he’s closer to clever, and by Class 5 he’s become European.” Shekau then claimed his grandparents “saved” him by removing him from school.52 Around 1990, when Shekau was a teenager, he moved to Maiduguri’s outskirts like other emigrants to Maiduguri, including Yusuf’s family. Shekau studied under Sufis from 1995 to 1998 but abandoned Sufism and considered himself only “Sunni Muslim” by 1999. 53 He then enrolled in the “Higher Muslim” section of Maiduguri’s Borno College of Legal and Islamic Studies (BOCOLIS),54 which provided opportunities for students like Shekau to transition into formal schooling. However, BOCOLIS was directed by Sufi scholars like Ibrahim Saleh, whose sharia program “irritated” Salafis.55 At BOCOLIS Shekau reportedly met Mamman Nur, who introduced him to the Borno Ahlussunnah youth wing leader and SCSN representative, Yusuf.56 Abu Musab recalled Salafi scholars convinced Shekau to “renounce democracy” and leave BOCOLIS and noted Yusuf admired Shekau’s “piety,” which is why Yusuf “preferred Shekau over all other preachers” and made Shekau his deputy.57 However, Abu Musab acknowledged his father underestimated the “tumor” Shekau’s ideology would bring to the group, which Abu Musab attributed to Shekau’s “harsh upbringing.”58 While serving as Yusuf’s deputy, Shekau demonstrated humility, referring to himself in a 2008 sermon on monotheism as “Yusuf’s student.” In that sermon Shekau denigrated how “Western education considers heaven and earth not created by Allah” and explained how despite his microphone being produced from Western education, not even the most sophisticated science ever “created even one grain of rice” that Allah could produce. He concluded God knows everything, including “lifecycles of lice, ants, spiders, and mosquitos and even how they copulate,” and claimed only the CIA and SSS would deceive one to believe otherwise.59 More broadly, like Yusuf, Shekau believed Western education exposed Muslims to Nigeria’s national anthem, days of the week, whose names derive from mythological gods, and the gendered pronoun her to refer to Nigeria, which all repre-

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sented “idol worship.”60 Such schooling, according to Shekau, encouraged Muslims to respect English-speakers as “intelligent” and Arabic-speakers as “illiterates” and distanced students from Islam, which was haram.61 Yusuf and Shekau, therefore, never categorically opposed Western education, but rather secular contexts in which it was taught and its “mixing issues contrary to Islam,” like Darwinism.62 Also like Yusuf, Shekau condemned Izala, asking rhetorically in a 2009 sermon, “Why have we been fighting [Izala] for five to six years rather than the Constitution?” He questioned “how Muslims dedicated to fighting innovations (bida) and errors brought into Islam” could “work so hard to obtain political offices” and finally asked, again rhetorically, whether Izala considered Nigeria’s “Constitution to be sunna [traditional Islamic law].”63 In Yusuf’s own 2007 book describing his creed (aqida), he similarly stated democracy was “the idol of this era” and cited Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s position on democracy to argue it was polytheism.64 Shekau rarely spoke on international affairs before Yusuf’s death. However, he explained in one sermon that after “America captured Iraq,” it “allowed Iraqis to follow the Quran” but “America still ran the land’s affairs.” Citing tenth-century Andalusian theologian Ibn Hazm, Shekau argued Iraq was, therefore, Dar al-Kufr (Abode of Unbelief) and “whoever stayed in Iraq and did not fight the government was an unbeliever.”65 This was similar to Muhammed Ali, who declared takfir on the “entire” Nigerian society and labeled everyone but his followers planning jihad as infidels, including Yusuf.66 Muhammed Ali’s excessive takfir and Shekau’s sermons, therefore, presaged how Boko Haram would interpret Dar al-Kufr after Shekau’s declaring an “Islamic state” in Borno in 2014 and legitimizing killing anyone who voluntarily lived among “unbelievers.” Declaring War Although mainstream Muslims called Yusuf’s followers “boko haram,” which oversimplified Yusuf’s aqida and dawa, the moniker stuck, influencing understandings of Yusuf in Nigeria and abroad. In a November 2008 interview, for example, the BBC questioned Yusuf’s positions against Western education, gender-mixing, and polio vaccinations.67 Neglected were questions about core aspects of Yusuf’s preaching, including jihad and opposition to voting. Yusuf was, however, asked about his conflict with Nigeria’s government. He replied that in Monguno, northern Borno, Izala expelled his followers from mosques, expropriated their funds, and collaborated with police to arrest them when they opened new mosques.68 This was the first of several events starting in October 2008 demonstrating to Yusuf that an alliance between Izala and Nigeria’s government had formed to extinguish his movement.

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One month after that interview, in December 2008, Yusuf delivered a sermon justifying waging jihad. He argued postcolonial “hideous schemes” divided the Kanem-Bornu empire into Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon and referenced accounts of Chadian leaders since 1979—Goukouni Oueddei, Hissène Habré, and Idriss Déby—as well as South Sudanese rebel leader John Garang, who died in a 2005 helicopter crash in Uganda. Yusuf claimed national borders, including in Chad and Sudan, resulted in Muslims’ and Christians’ “mixing together, tribes competing for power, and democracy, capitalism, Communism, and nationalism” becoming “substitutes” for Islam.69 Arguing Europeans created these political systems to divide and rule Muslim lands, Yusuf lamented Western-trained Islamic scholars’ becoming “indoctrinated in secularism” and returning home promoting “new ways of thinking” about how “democracy is Islamic and jihad is so-and-so.”70 This was alluding to Salafi scholars like Britain-educated Isa Ali Pantami, if not also Britain-educated politicians like Ali Modu Sheriff. Yusuf credited Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the eighteenth century and the Muslim Brotherhood in the twentieth century for inspiring Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. However, Yusuf noted the Muslim Brotherhood erred by “working with people of different beliefs,” including Sufis, Shias, and democrats, causing its ideological “dilution.”71 Abu Musab similarly attributed Izala scholars’ “belief in the permissibility of entering parliament and legislative elections” to their being like the “Bankrupt Brotherhood,” which was a derogatory appellation for the Muslim Brotherhood coined by IUM alumnus and Yemeni Salafi scholar Muqbil bin Hadi al-Wadi’i.72 Ultimately, Yusuf concluded the only “pure” Islamic movements were al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and “the people of Algeria,” an indirect AQIM reference.73 Yusuf thus established ideological foundations for Boko Haram to follow to become a “pure” Islamic movement after his martyrdom. Yusuf also referenced Abubakar Bako, whose conversion to Christianity preceded the 1987 Kafanchan clashes, Isioma Daniel’s 2002 ThisDay article, and the November 2008 clashes in Jos that left hundreds dead. These were cases where Christians “insulted the prophet, killed Muslims, and lived in peace.” Yusuf countered scholars who told him, “You should exercise patience . . . whenever these events happen” by declaring that his group “reacts to the likes of Isioma Daniel” and “Allah made me understand what will stop them from insulting the prophet or killing Muslims is jihad.”74 He reminded his followers that he instructed them “to be patient until we acquire power” and that the group “was founded for the purpose of jihad and we never hid this objective from anyone.”75 With such statements, it became apparent Yusuf was going to lead jihad in Nigeria . . . and it was imminent. In that same December 2008 sermon Yusuf also recounted meeting the SSS and police. He was, for example, arrested again in November 2008 for “infiltrating security agencies . . . to obtain arms” and “using his Islamic organization to incite disaffection against the government.”76 One follower,

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Bana Banki,77 who was among the ISWAP commanders killed by Shekau years later, was also banned from preaching, and Yusuf’s deputy from Niger was deported.78 During Yusuf’s arrest, he claimed he told police officers he was “establishing iqamat al-hujja (presenting evidence of impiety)” on them. However, Yusuf noted the officials “declined the invitation” to change course and stop using secular laws.79 This meant after years of delivering this message to officials and their rejecting it, jihad could now be waged against them. When charges against Yusuf were dropped in January 2009, he continued preaching. In his sermon that month he lamented how when arrested, there were accusations against him for training “foreigners” from Niger who fought in deadly clashes in Jos in November 2008. This seemingly confirmed there were armed members from Niger in Yusuf’s group. However, what enraged Yusuf was how Muslims from Niger could be called foreigners, which was impossible in a “land of Islam.”80 In February 2009, Yusuf and Mamman Nur traveled to Sokoto, where shura member and former university-level nursing student Kabiru Sokoto hosted them.81 In a subsequent March 2009 sermon in Maiduguri with Yusuf, Nur recounted their visiting a Sokoto museum and seeing a flag hoisted by Usman dan Fodio two centuries earlier. However, reminiscent of al-Zakzaky’s 1980 Funtua Declaration’s critique of emirs’ abandoning Dan Fodio’s jihad, Nur lamented how “our forefathers waged jihad when Europeans came but now they fold the flag . . . and today you are forcibly enrolling your sons in Western education? And seeing it as the epitome of civilization!” Nur argued that “Allah removed the peace and stability following Usman dan Fodio’s jihad because Nigerians accepted everything Europeans brought,” including homosexuality, sociology, football, and this “government of prostitution!”82 Nur also distinguished Boko Haram from al-Zakzaky’s IMN, which he claimed lacked guns and could not perform the obligatory duty of jihad. In contrast, Nur argued, Boko Haram must have guns and would “commence the jihad,” which he linked locally to November 2008 violence in Jos and internationally to Palestine.83 Yusuf followed Nur’s sermon by claiming CAN was organizing attacks on Muslims and Ali Modu Sheriff, described as “impious . . . like the Mongols,” was ordering police to beat his followers “like donkeys.”84 Other preachers on Yusuf’s shura delivered similar messages. In a May 2009 sermon alongside Kabiru Sokoto, for example, Salisu Wudil highlighted the symbolism of flags, proclaiming “the green-white-green Nigerian flag will soon be replaced by the Islamic flag!”85 One month later, in June 2009, Yusuf’s lambasting Sheriff and desire to wage jihad climaxed when followers refused to obey new ordinances requiring motorcycle riders to wear helmets, which they believed were inappropriate headgear for showing humility to God. When they did not wear helmets and traveled to a June 11, 2009, Maiduguri funeral, the security forces shot at them. Yusuf learned this while lecturing in Kaduna at the mosque of Salafi preacher

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Shaikh Ahmed al-Garkawi, who sympathized with Yusuf and received funding to build his mosque from Yusuf’s former sponsor, Muhammed Ilyas Bello Damagun.86 During Yusuf’s sermon, he stated that he would soon wage jihad and that followers in Maiduguri already pledged loyalty to him. Yusuf then asked Kaduna followers to pledge loyalty to him immediately or wait until jihad began in Maiduguri and join then.87 Mamman Nur also broke down and cried when discussing jihad in a sermon after the motorcycle helmet incident, causing his audience to chant “Allahu Akbar.”88 Unlike Isa Ali Pantami, who emotively cried when he discussed the 2004 Yelwa-Shendam clashes but never fought jihad, or Ibrahim al-Zakzaky, whose followers were later brutalized in 2015 and barely fought back, Mamman Nur would eventually lead fighters in battle against Nigeria. This was talk and action. Yusuf was so moved by Nur’s sermon that he claimed to followers he forgot Nur only repeated in Hausa the sermon Yusuf already delivered (in Arabic or Kanuri).89 In Nur’s sermon, he justified suicide bombings when the imam, Yusuf, approved them. Nur even gestured with his hand the motion of detonation when he mentioned “wrapping bombs around our bodies, saying ‘In the Name of God (Bismillah),’ detonating, and going to heaven when they go to hell . . . boom, boom!” Nur further instructed followers to donate money to the group’s “war chest.”90 Waging jihad was no longer theoretical. The specific tactics they would use were being discussed. According to Datty Assalafiy, Nur, like Yusuf, originally opposed Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination. However, by 2009 Nur believed the “Kanama brothers were right” because Shaikh Jaafar became “a government scholar” and “when he was their teacher, he refused to support them in waging jihad” at Kanama, which made “spilling his blood halal (permissible).”91 This account indicates Nur progressively adopted the mentality of late Ali’s supporters when preparing for jihad. One day after the motorcycle helmet incident, Yusuf returned to Maiduguri and delivered his most famous sermon called “Open Letter,” which he addressed to President Yar’Adua, seven SSS and military officials, and “the small authority, so-called Governor Ali [Modu] Sheriff.”92 Yusuf described how the government with support of traditional rulers was confiscating the group’s mosques and providing them to Izala, citing the November 2008 Monguno incident and another in Argungu, Sokoto. Yusuf called Izala “scholars of democracy and George Bush’s students” and suggested they “tell their [government] masters to change their strategy.” Yusuf further pointed to arrests of followers in Kaduna and Bauchi, claiming, “we receive this treatment everywhere.”93 However, it was Yusuf’s followers’ telling him about their lack of fear when facing enemy bullets in the motorcycle helmet incident that made Yusuf realize they were in a “state of oppression” and prepared for jihad.94

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Yusuf attributed “intimidation” of his followers to Operation Flush, an “anti-banditry program” Ali Modu Sheriff relaunched in Borno in November 2008.95 Yusuf claimed it targeted his followers because his “preaching reached unprecedented places,” which Ahmed Salkida acknowledged was the operation’s purpose. According to Salkida, Borno and other state governments “saw the need to halt the nuisance” of Yusuf’s followership and were “alarmed a sect starting with a handful of people was hitting [one million followers]” and could “very soon” assume political power in Borno.96 A June 12, 2009, US embassy cable similarly acknowledged “some officers of Operation Flush were deliberately seeking to provoke” Yusuf’s group into confrontation.97 It, therefore, appears Operation Flush’s launch marked the time when Borno’s government coordinated with Izala and other Muslim leaders to eliminate Yusuf by expropriating his group’s mosques and arresting followers until the final crackdown would occur. Yusuf admitted in his “Open Letter” he “condoned the brutalities” because iqamat al-hujja required him to preach to officials about their “impiety” and convince them to change course. However, Yusuf concluded, “we have exercised the required patience.”98 It was time for jihad. The Final Battle Between Yusuf’s June 12 “Open Letter” and launch of jihad, he delivered sermons explaining “jihad is obligatory upon everyone (fard ‘ayn).”99 His “Open Letter” sermon’s video recording also for the first time featured Arabic jihadist nasheeds and images of rifles with sounds of bullets firing, reflecting the group’s psychological preparation for jihad.100 Presaging the group’s future tactics, Yusuf also proclaimed, “jihad cannot be performed without ribat (guarding frontiers) and ‘amiliyat istishhadiya (martyrdom operations),” both common terms in the jihadist lexicon.101 This highlighted Yusuf’s embrace of al-Qaeda tactics and his differences with mainstream Salafi scholars about waging jihad. For example, three months before Yusuf’s “Open Letter,” Muhammed Sani Rijiyar Lemo, who became Shaikh Jaafar’s actual heir and studied jihadism academically, traveled to Maiduguri to preach that Nigeria was not “under foreign occupation” and jihad was not obligatory.102 Besides Rijiyar Lemo and Shaikh Jaafar’s other disciples who rejected Yusuf’s jihad call, there were other smaller “jihadist communities” that did not support Yusuf’s jihad.103 For example, Salafis in Okene, Kogi State, whose emir, Mustapha Idris (Mallam Mustapha), publicly destroyed Sufi shrines, venerated Anwar al-Awlaki, and preached to ABU students in Zaria, believed that Yusuf was too soft in not declaring takfir on Sufis and that Kogi Salafis needed to prioritize “liberating” Kogi, or specifically ethnic Ebiraland, before far away Borno, or to fight Americans in Iraq

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directly.104 Syria’s government, however, reportedly preferred Arabs to transit Syria to fight in Iraq, which meant the route to Syria was blocked and aside from one Nigerian from Kogi who previously fought with alShabaab’s predecessors in Somalia, few other Nigerians, if any, reached Iraq.105 After Yusuf’s death, Salafis in Kogi consequently gravitated toward Ansaru, whose internationalism, albeit not views on takfir, resonated with them more than Borno-centric Boko Haram, discussed in Chapter 8. One of Yusuf’s most experienced followers, Muhammed Ashafa, who was out of prison in 2009, urged Yusuf not to wage jihad. Perhaps Ashafa witnessed how al-Qaeda’s agenda could harm Nigerian Muslims, which would explain why Hamza Rabia noted in his 2004 letter to Ibrahim Harun that Ashafa was “not completely dedicated.” However, Yusuf responded to Ashafa that jihad was obligatory.106 There was no turning back. Before waging jihad, Abu Aisha recalls Yusuf held shura meetings to nominate a successor in case he was killed. Three nominees were Shekau, Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe, and Salisu Wudil. Although Nur opposed Shekau because he suspected Shekau was “too bloodthirsty,” which eventually proved correct, the shura selected Shekau and Gombe as the top candidates because their preaching was considered most similar to Yusuf’s.107 Gombe was a Gombe city mosque’s imam and occasionally hosted Aminu Dourawa to provide sermons about al-Qaeda based on Dourawa’s monitoring Al Jazeera.108 Gombe was also orphaned in childhood but supported by Isa Ali Pantami’s family, which enabled Gombe to excel in Quranic studies under Pantami’s mentorship and eventually enter university in Bauchi. Nevertheless, Gombe still betrayed Pantami by siding with Yusuf after their 2006 debate.109 Notwithstanding Gombe’s qualifications and his teaching of the hadith collection Sahih al-Bukhari with Yusuf, the shura chose Shekau as Yusuf’s successor because he was older and had been with Yusuf longer than Gombe.110 Nur would later challenge Shekau from within ISWAP and Gombe would do the same by becoming Ansaru’s first leader. Because Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi and Khalid al-Barnawi were close to Yusuf’s shura they were almost certainly informed about Yusuf’s impending jihad. As early as June 29, 2009, US officials reported a “militant subset of al-Qaeda” in Boko Haram’s ranks and a Chadian with “limited ties” to alQaeda waiting for “other Islamic extremists” to join him for a “near-term operation” requiring more funding. The officials noted the “Nigerian Taliban” might soon “launch a massive surprise attack” on “critical infrastructure or against high-profile targets,” including “top Nigerian government officials or security agents.”111 This indicated one month before Yusuf’s followers launched the jihad, Yusuf’s plans were telegraphed and Nigeria, the United States, and Yusuf’s followers all anticipated the forthcoming violence. With succession plans complete, Yusuf ordered members to sell their belongings: a taxi driver sold his taxi; members with property sold their

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real estate; businessmen sold their businesses; and women sold their jewelry.112 They then contributed to the “war chest,” which Mamman Nur ordered them to do in his sermon about suicide bombings where he stated, “Give all your assets. Let’s give everything we have. . . . Anyone who doesn’t give or participate in jihad is a hypocrite.”113 Yusuf also ordered followers to buy and smuggle weapons into Nigeria and train in explosives. According to Abu Musab, members received some Kalashnikovs and ammunition, but Nigerian customs officials discovered the weapons, which compelled the government to mobilize for the final crackdown.114 Shaikh Albani subsequently claimed those weapons came from a “group in Algeria” through Nigeria’s border with Niger.115 Abu Musab also recalled Yusuf’s designating Abu Amir al-Barnawi as general of his “mujahidin army.” This general, in turn, had three commanders under him, who each had four commanders under them, with 12,000 total fighters.116 If Yusuf’s followership reached one million people, as Ahmed Salkida estimated, it is plausible such large numbers of fighters could mobilize for jihad. One Maiduguri-based female lawyer and convert to Islam known as “Mama Boko Haram,” who cooked for Yusuf’s followers, also recalled that before July 2009 several followers traveled for months and returned claiming they had trained on “how to kill.”117 Yusuf’s problem, however, was too few followers had sufficient training to use weapons the group acquired or pilfered from armories to match the greater firepower of Nigeria’s security forces. Jihad began on July 26, 2009, when Yusuf’s followers stormed Bauchi’s main police station. However, they lacked sufficient ammunition to withstand the security forces, who retook the building, killed dozens of members, and then raided the group’s mosque called Kandahar. This reflected patterns in other cities over the next forty-eight hours where Yusuf’s followers attacked police stations, stole arms, and engaged in combat to control urban centers. However, their plans were unsustainable. In Bauchi, like in other cities, there were mass arrests, including of wives and women followers, and uprisings were quashed. Bauchi’s governor described the arrests there as “the best thing for lasting peace in the state.”118 Only months earlier, he also summoned Islamic scholars to lecture Yusuf’s followers about why Yusuf was wrong, but Yusuf’s followers responded by “issuing fatwas against the imams” and threatened to “slaughter them.”119 These arrests, therefore, were the governor’s revenge. Interviews that journalists conducted with arrested members in Bauchi revealed they viewed jihad as retaliation for police harassment and arrests of their leaders, including Yusuf. Some also explained how husbands or parents discouraged them from joining Yusuf’s followership, but they stayed against their family’s wishes.120 This resembled Abu Muhammed alBauchi, who sided with Yusuf despite his family’s ostracizing him. In other

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cases, Yusuf’s unemployed followers, especially youths who left their parents to join, received petty jobs when Yusuf and Shekau personally introduced them to group members with businesses.121 The care offered by Yusuf, Shekau, and the group’s committees ensured members were as comfortable with Yusuf as with their own families. Confrontations continued on June 27 when Boko Haram targeted a customs post on Borno’s border with Cameroon and launched attacks in Yobe and Sokoto, where an arrested university professor was “paraded” with four members for journalists. He stated he resigned his professorship to “agitate for full sharia implementation in Nigeria.” Elsewhere, in Abuja and Katsina there were a hundred more arrests and security forces in Kano repelled Boko Haram attacks on police stations.122 The group’s ability to launch simultaneous attacks in multiple cities indicated coordination across cells. However, the group still lacked sufficient weapons and training and the element of surprise. Kano-based members attacking police stations, including in Wudil district, were different from members elsewhere because they reportedly included Chadians and had trained in camps in Bauchi’s mountains before July 2009. Among members arrested in Kano were also prominent individuals, including Wudil district’s vice chairman and his son, Kano’s former permanent secretary and his son, and a well-known businessman and his son. Wudil district’s vice chairman also sponsored building shura member Salisu Wudil’s mosque in Wudil district, Kano, which was converted into an academy for military training and storing explosives.123 A Nigerian security officer involved in Kano’s July 27 clashes stated Salisu Wudil, who was killed in the fighting, hosted a “global network” with members from Niger and Chad who operated in Kano for years.124 This description resembled how fighters entered Kano from outside Nigeria before Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination and, according to Shaikh Albani, used the same routes to enter into Nigeria from Niger in April 2007 as the militants connected to the “group in Algeria” supplying arms to Yusuf in 2009.125 This suggested that Nigerians with AQIM were supplying Yusuf with arms before the July 2009 clashes and that they entered Kano from Niger before Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination, like Ibrahim Uquba al-Muhajir did. Kano was also where pre-2009 al-Qaeda cell leaders were based, including Abubakar Kambar, Ibrahim Harun, and Hassan Allane. This points to Kano’s becoming the hub for foreign-born and foreign-trained jihadists, and eventually Ansaru’s founding city, and to Salisu Wudil’s possible role in hosting militants involved in Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination. Salisu Wudil’s connections to local political leaders, including in his native Wudil district, could have provided Shaikh Jaafar’s assassins with intelligence and cover in Kano. Not only did late Muhammed Ali’s loyalists and perhaps also foreign sponsors want Shaikh Jaafar dead, but so did some politicians who resented Shaikh Jaafar’s becoming a “people’s conscience,” condemning political corruption, and opposing Kano’s governing administra-

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tion.126 Salisu Wudil’s deputy, who was arrested during the July 27 clashes and claimed to be “fighting Westernization to prevent the adulteration of Islam,” also ran an Islamic school in Kano’s Panshekera district where “Taliban” militants attacked a police station four days after Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination.127 This deputy would have had local knowledge of Panshekera to facilitate that attack.128 Salisu Wudil was also arrested after that Panshekera attack, but like other terrorism suspects he was released.129 Nevertheless, Salisu Wudil’s Kano-based “global network,” mosque-turned-academy, local political sponsors, Panshekera-based deputy, high rank in Yusuf’s following, and cruder oratory than Yusuf suggest his possible collaboration with late Ali’s loyalists, including AQIM-trained Ibrahim Uquba al-Muhajir, to assassinate Shaikh Jaafar in Kano in April 2007. Muhammed Yusuf probably never ordered Shaikh Jaafar’s assassination, but if his followers were “prime suspects,” as Shaikh Albani claimed, then Salisu Wudil might have been involved. Death of the Leader By July 27, Yusuf’s followers occupied Maiduguri government buildings and brought the city to standstill. Only there did followers withstand the security forces for more than a day. However, security forces were nearing Yusuf’s Ibn Taymiyya mosque, where hundreds of his supporters were holding out, and had already shot Shekau and believed they killed him while repelling his attack on a police station with Abu Amir al-Barnawi and a professor, who were both killed.130 Two other leading members, including another Adamawa-born professor and Yusuf’s hisba head, were also killed in Maiduguri fighting.131 When army reinforcements arrived at Maiduguri’s airbase, Yusuf knew his followers would not withstand their firepower. Abu Musab recalled Yusuf ordered followers to flee through Maiduguri’s outskirts, change clothes, and blend into the population or “migrate to other lands where there are fellow mujahidin brothers,” such as AQIM’s camps in the Sahel.132 Aware of Kanama camp’s decimation, Yusuf already reorganized his group to survive any similar crackdown. This is why Khalid al-Barnawi, Abu Muhammed alBauchi, and Abubakar Kambar maintained communications lines to AQIM, which they exploited after Yusuf’s death to provide Yusuf’s followers with advanced training to relaunch the jihad, as discussed in the next chapter. Ahmed Salkida called Yusuf for what became the final interview of his life. Yusuf confirmed a member died by accidentally blowing himself up making explosives, which demonstrated how Yusuf’s followers were insufficiently trained.133 Yusuf also told Salkida that since Prophet Muhammad’s time, Borno “gradually turned into an Islamic state,” but “colonial masters turned it into an infidel land” and “we are ready to die with our brothers and will never concede to unbelief in Allah.” Yusuf also predicted correctly “if we give ourselves up or they get us, they will kill me.”134

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According to Abu Musab, Yusuf remained in Maiduguri to face death because he believed his martyrdom would make Nigerian officials wrongly believe the group was defeated. This would ease pressure on followers in hiding so they could more effectively plan the group’s next phase, “guerrilla war.”135 Indeed, Yusuf never fled Maiduguri and was captured three days after the uprisings commenced near his father-in-law Alhaji Baba Fugu Muhammed’s home. He was then taken to a police station and interrogated by officers filming him on their mobile phones. Among other questions, officers asked Yusuf about his deputy, whom Yusuf acknowledged was Shekau, but Yusuf claimed he did not know Shekau’s location. Yusuf smugly answered other questions until Ali Modu Sheriff came to the police station and reportedly insinuated to officers to kill Yusuf, which would not have been unprecedented because dozens, if not hundreds, of Yusuf’s followers had already been killed in this way during the uprisings.136 Soon after Yusuf’s death, his interrogation, which was recorded on officers’ mobile phones, and photographs of his mutilated body resembling images of Maitatsine’s dead followers in 1980 were posted on the Internet, including YouTube.137 Social media was still new to many Nigerians, and Yusuf’s killers probably never expected recordings of Yusuf’s interrogation and other July 2009 killings to go viral and have such a large propaganda impact after Yusuf’s death. Besides Yusuf, Alhaji Baba Fugu Muhammed was also killed, and Alhaji Buji Foi was shot multiple times in the back in a video-recorded execution also disseminated on YouTube.138 As Yusuf expected, Nigerian officials believed Yusuf’s death ended his movement. Ali Modu Sheriff’s deputy, Adamu Dibal, for example, stated, “the entire story was Muhammed Yusuf, Muhammed Yusuf, Muhammed Yusuf . . . without this kingpin it will be difficult for them to regroup.” He also claimed Yusuf’s death was not “extrajudicial” but “necessary” and admitted Yusuf was “well-known to intelligence agencies for several years.” The SSS’s monitoring of Yusuf was also confirmed by President Yar’Adua, who responded to interview questions about the clashes while on an official visit in Brazil.139 Yusuf was, therefore, correct to have kept ties to AQIM under wraps because otherwise Nigerian and foreign intelligence agencies might have disrupted the group before July 2009 or been better informed about the group to anticipate its resurgence in 2010. Yar’Adua also told the media that tanks and checkpoints would remain “to maintain law and order and total destruction of the sect.”140 However, little could Yar’Adua imagine within four years “the sect” would conquer territory in Borno. Nigeria’s government hardly expected Boko Haram to revive, let alone join the global jihadist movement. Nevertheless, two weeks after the crackdown, security forces dismantled another ascetic “sect” in Mokwa, Niger State, called “Garin Darussalam” (City of the Home of Peace) that existed peacefully ever since its founders fled Kano on hijra in 1993 and abstained

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from using government courts, schools, roads, and markets.141 However, it may have had a historical association to Maitatsine because some people called the community “Maitisin.”142 Later, in December 2009, security forces also killed members in Bauchi-based Kalakato communities in further clean-up operations.143 These Niger State and Bauchi communities, however, were more localized and less militant than Yusuf’s followers, whose regional alliances and familiarity with global jihadism enabled them to receive training, support, and inspiration for relaunching the jihad in 2010. Security officials were mistaken to associate these two idiosyncratic Muslim communities with Yusuf’s followers. There was also discussion on www.gamji.com about “screening” preachers after the July 2009 clashes because “Islamic religious authority” was “too diffused” and there was nobody to license the country’s countless local scholars, such as Yusuf would have been early in his career.144 There were countries, such as Uzbekistan, that in practice, if not in law, enforced secularism and licensed only preachers that followed the government authorized national religious “tradition.” In Uzbekistan, for example, this meant only liberal Sunni Hanafi Islam was endorsed and “foreign” Salafism, Shiism, and Islamic groups, such as Tablighi Jamaat, were banned, especially after hisba-style vigilantes evolved into the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and launched attacks against the “atheist” Uzbek government and Western and Israeli interests in the country in the 2000s. While such policies eliminated the IMU and its religious support base and resulted in no terrorist attacks in the country after 2009, it also meant the country began democratizing nearly two decades after Nigeria’s democratization and Islamists in Uzbekistan either became political prisoners or were exiled throughout the 2000s.145 Nigeria possibly could have adopted Sufism as its “tradition,” which Sufis urged after the 1982 Maiduguri clashes when they recommended banning Izala and Maitatsine. However, such bans would have been out of place in the democracy Nigeria intended to become after its 1979 return to civilian rule under Shehu Shagari, and Nigeria lacked the Soviet legacy of, for example, Uzbekistan, which viewed outside religious influences as suspicious and used its intelligence services to repel them. Moreover, by 2009 Nigeria’s “religious marketplace” was so diversified that it was too late to retroactively control religion and any policy to do so could be exploited by influential preachers to target weaker rivals. The Garin Darussalam community head, for example, contended that Shaikh Albani encouraged the authorities to suppress his community by alleging it was linked to Muhammed Yusuf.146 In practice, however, after July 2009, Boko Haram’s preaching was banned, references to global jihad like those in Isa Ali Pantami’s sermons in 2006 were excised from public religious discourse, and “counter-radicalization” became en vogue. Within a decade Ahmad Gumi, SCSN’s Ibrahim Datti Ahmed and Nafiu Baba-Ahmed, Izala’s Yakubu

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Musa, and JTI’s Abubakar Mujahid also turned their attention toward Ibrahim al-Zakzaky’s IMN, which occurred as Saudi-Iranian tensions escalated in the Middle East. The IMN, which became the last standing Nigerian Islamic group with an antistate history, was eventually considered a “greater danger to Nigeria than Boko Haram” and was demolished in 2015.147 While Nigerian politicians, Islamic scholars, and public commentators were looking back at what went wrong, global jihadists and Boko Haram saw the July 2009 clashes as an opportunity. A jihadist analyst writing on the Ansar al-Mujahideen jihadist web forum, for example, claimed to be “amazed” by the “stupidity of the Crusaders” who failed to understand that “jihadist groups are like trees that grow by the blood of martyred commanders,” and just as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death led to Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s rise, Muhammed Yusuf’s death led to Shekau’s rise. The writer added the “2009 massacre . . . woke up” Nigerian jihadists to fight under the “banner of the global jihad movement” and “do what their African brothers are doing in Somalia.”148 Similarly, Ahmed Salkida noted Nigerian authorities could not comprehend the “fuse that drives” Boko Haram was “inclination to the global jihad movement” and not “local politics,” “growing unemployment,” or other factors influencing recruitment to non-jihadist Islamic groups.149 Perhaps Islamic scholars, government officials, journalists, and academics underestimated Boko Haram’s resolve because they convinced themselves the moniker “boko haram” was actually Yusuf’s creed and Yusuf’s followers were ignoramuses. However, the group was inspired by jihad, martyrdom, and the desire for a dawla, and, according to Abu Musab, Nigeria’s “false victory . . . lit the fire of war again” and “great jihad” began even before “the martyrs’ blood was dry.”150 Contrary to government assessments, Boko Haram was hardly finished. As early as August 9, Vanguard reported “acting leader” Sanni Umar as stating the “infidel media” portrayed the group incorrectly while affirming Yusuf’s “martyrdom” and declaring loyalty to al-Qaeda and Bin Laden.151 It is unlikely Shekau would tolerate Sanni Umar, however, because his use of terms like “Islamic Revolution” and southern Nigerian focus were inconsistent with Shekau’s post-2009 messaging and were more like that of Ansaru or “rogue” Boko Haram representatives who emerged in subsequent years. Nevertheless, Sanni Umar’s statement was reposted as a comment on Anwar alAwlaki’s blog after al-Awlaki posted a message he received from one of Yusuf’s followers that discussed how “scholars of ahl sunnah betrayed [sic]” Yusuf and that “the field commander is still at safe and they have promised a come back [sic].”152 Also posting a comment on al-Awlaki’s blog was Abu Umayr from the Brigades of Tawhid in Nigeria, whose recounting of Boko Haram history and lexicon was much more consistent with global jihadists than Sanni Umar, whose statement was considered a “fabrication” by a “nonMuslim website” by another poster on al-Awlaki’s blog.153

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Abu Umayr argued “neo-jahiliya” emerged after British colonization subjugated the “Shariah of Islam” from Usman dan Fodio’s time; claimed Yusuf’s “brigade of Tawhid” made its “first public appearance around 1995”; and acknowledged the “misunderstanding” between Yusuf and Ali during the Kanama events, the group’s being “closely monitored by the intelligence agencies” after Kanama, and the group’s being given the misleading name Boko Haram by “kufr-oriented media,” despite the group’s primarily opposing Islamic education receiving “less priority” than Western education. Abu Umayr further indicated the same security forces who suppressed November 2008 Muslim-Christian clashes in Jos also suppressed Yusuf’s uprising in July 2009, which accurately reflected how troops redeployed from Jos destroyed Yusuf’s Ibn Taymiyya mosque and “wiped out 200 extremists.”154 As if having read www.gamji.com one week earlier, Abu Umayr also condemned scholars who “support the regulation of preaching . . . so that the colonial creation of lugard155 will be maintained.” Lastly, he reaffirmed the muwahhidin [monotheists] in Nigeria would wage jihad like their brothers in Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia and promised the group could never be bribed by “large sums of money” like Niger Delta militants who fought for “worldly benefits.”156 Despite opposition from another Nigerian whose posts resembled Isa Ali Pantami’s following by recognizing that Boko Haram was mistreated but Muhammed Yusuf was not a “shaikh,” another member whose posts resembled a jihadist media distributor confirmed that “we are under the leadership of our new amir Shaikh Abubakar Shekau” and called on “Brothers worldwide” to join the group in jihad.157 Shekau survived gunshot wounds and escaped to hideouts on Maiduguri’s outskirts where Boko Haram had support networks and soon asserted his leadership.158 Meanwhile, Mamman Nur anticipated the clashes and fled to Cameroon, Chad, and further to East Africa. Other followers settled throughout Nigeria, including Aminu Tashen-Ilmi, who was reportedly deployed by Yusuf to the Niger Delta to purchase arms. However, he could not return to Borno because of the fighting and instead opened chop shops in Kaduna for Boko Haram members and criminals to steal and resell vehicles.159 Still other members, including Khalid al-Barnawi and Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi, traveled to AQIM’s camps in the Sahel to establish training programs and supply lines for Boko Haram members to acquire the skills and arms they lacked before July 2009. Yusuf correctly assessed he would become a martyr, while his son, Abu Musab, would be groomed by Shekau for leadership roles despite eventually becoming Shekau’s nemesis. Once Shekau recovered from injuries, his first step was to claim his rightful succession of Yusuf by releasing statements and videos through the Internet and mobile phones. He then publicized the group’s commitment to global jihad on a scale Nigerians never imagined before.

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1. Paden, Faith and Politics, 37. 2. Flynn, “Nigerian Troops”; Omonobi, “Tension in Kano.” 3. Brigaglia, “Contribution,” 3. 4. ICG reported the informant was Babagana, but it may actually have been Bulama Shuaibu. ICG, “Curbing Violence,” 23; Paden, Faith and Politics, 37. 5. US Embassy Abuja, “Nigerian Terror Suspects.” 6. Aisha interview, 2019. 7. Ibid. 8. BBC, “Islamists Attack”; Mahtani, “Islamists Adopt.” 9. McGreal, “Christians Live in Dread.” 10. IS, “Davet ve cihad,” 35. 11. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 37; Yusuf, “Clearing Doubts.” 12. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 23. 13. Africa Media, “Communiques,” 9. 14. CUPS Nigeria, “Update”; Kassim, “Boko Haram’s Internal,” 5. 15. Real name: Alhaji Fari. 16. Assalafiy, “Masu.” 17. Ibid. 18. Aisha interview, 2019. 19. Adam, “Final Sermon”; Brigaglia, “Ja‘far Mahmoud Adam,” 43. 20. Africa Media, “Communiques,” 9. 21. Agence France-Presse, “Head of Islamic Charity”; Ottaway, “U.S. Eyes Money Trails”; US Senate Commission on the Judiciary, “Saudi Arabia,” 98. 22. CNN, “Saudis Reform Charities.” 23. Kalu, “MP Accuses UK Trust Fund.” 24. Walker, “What Is Boko Haram?” 3. 25. Kaag, “Islamic Charities,” 162; US Embassy N’Djamena, “Grand Imam Voices Concern.” 26. US Embassy N’Djamena, “Chad’s Grand Imam”; Seesemann, “Takfir Debate,” 73. 27. WAMY, “Majlis.” 28. Al-Muntada al-Islami was referred to by its English name, The Islamic Forum. US Embassy N’Djamena, “Chad’s Grand Imam.” 29. Buhari, “Islamic Body.” 30. Adeniyi, Power, 108. 31. Adam, “Final Sermon,” 36:50. 32. Anonymous former Ansaru associate interview. 33. Omipidan, “How Yusuf.” 34. Pantami interview. 35. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 46, 149; Yusuf, “Who Is Prophet Muhammed.” 36. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 47. 37. Aisha interview, 2019. 38. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 48. 39. For Umar Mukhtar in AQIM messaging, see Droukdel, “Supporters of Freedom.” 40. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 48. 41. Reh and Ludwar-Ene, Gender and Identity, 63–64. 42. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 56; Yusuf, “Surat al-Tawba.” 43. Ndzovu, “Kenya’s Jihadi Clerics,” 364. 44. Ibid. 45. The Guardian, “Four Charged”; Lahoud, “Beware of Imitators,” 4. 46. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 67–68; Yusuf, “Surat al-Imran.” 47. Azzam, Signs, 24, 32, 49–51. 48. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 67. 49. Ibid., 55. 50. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 35; Shekau, “Mocking Nigeria,” 35:00–37:00. 51. Oduah, “Mother of Boko Haram Leader.” 52. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 118; Shekau, “Western Civilization.”

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53. Salkida, Twitter, November 5, 2014. 54. Since renamed Mohammed Goni College of Legal and Islamic Studies. 55. Alkali, Monguno, and Mustafa, “Overview of Islamic Actors,” 29; Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 35–36. 56. ICG, “Curbing Violence,” 19. 57. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 35–36. 58. Ibid. 59. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 60; Shekau, “Monotheism.” 60. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 121; Shekau, “Western Civilization.” 61. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 121. 62. Boyle, “Nigeria’s ‘Taliban’ Enigma.” 63. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 143; Shekau, “Hadhihi.” 64. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 30; Yusuf, “Hadhihi,” 38. 65. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 123; Shekau, “Western Civilization.” 66. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 13. 67. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 74. 68. Ibid., 75. 69. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 89; Yusuf, “History of Muslims.” 70. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 89. 71. Ibid., 92. 72. Africa Media, “Communiques,” 9. 73. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 92. 74. Ibid., 94. 75. Ibid. 76. Yahaya, “Islamic Scholar Arraigned”; Ajani, “Small Group.” 77. Real name: Bana Blachera. See Guivinda, “‘Nouveau Chef.’” 78. Legit.ng, “Total War”; Bintube, “Boko Haram Phenomenon,” 16. 79. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 96–97. 80. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 109; Yusuf, “Admonition.” 81. Ayorinde, “How Kabiru.” 82. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 153–154; Nur and Yusuf, “Returning.” 83. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 156. 84. Ibid., 161. 85. Wudil, “Nigerian Flag.” 86. Agbese, “Media Trust”; Damagum, “Tough Love”; US Embassy Abuja, “Police Shoot 17.” 87. Nasrullah discussion. 88. Nur and Yusuf, “Jihad,” 35:00–38:00. 89. Ibid., 1:05:00–1:07:00. 90. Ibid., 16:00–21:00. 91. Assalafiy, “Masu.” 92. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 187; Yusuf, “Open Letter.” 93. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 183. 94. Ibid., 185. 95. Ibid., 193. 96. Salkida, “Genesis and Consequences.” 97. US Embassy Abuja, “Police Shoot 17.” 98. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 195. 99. BH, “Sermons,” 16. 100. Yusuf, “Open Letter,” 00:01. 101. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 169; BH, “Sermons,” 19. 102. Kassim, “Boko Haram’s Internal,” 13. 103. Ebira View Online, “Destruction.” 104. Mustapha Idris, “Casting Out”; Markaz Ahlus Sunnah Waljama’ah, “Insha’Allah.” 105. Anonymous Western European intelligence official discussion; Nasrullah, “Okene: Long Awaited Battleground.” 106. Kassim discussion. 107. Aisha interview, 2017.

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108. Kassim discussion. 109. Pantami interview. 110. Aisha interview, 2017; Aisha interview, 2019. 111. US Secretary of State, “Diplomatic Security.” 112. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 29. 113. Nur and Yusuf, “Jihad,” 16:00–21:00. 114. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 29–30. 115. Omopidan, “How Yusuf.” 116. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 29–30. 117. Pulse, “Mama Boko.” 118. Ogbodo, “Why We Hit Bauchi.” 119. Salkida, “Genesis and Consequences.” 120. Ogbodo, “Why We Hit Bauchi”; Hazzad, “Nigeria Forces.” 121. Anonymous, “Deradicalization Case.” 122. Eyoboka, “Bauchi Crisis”; Abdulsalam Mohammed, “38 Boko Haram Members.” 123. Jaafar, “Police Nab”; Sani, “Boko Haram.” 124. Nmeribeh, “Boko Haram Scare.” 125. Omipidan, “How Yusuf.” 126. Anonymous former Ansaru associate interview. 127. Ajani, “Small Group.” 128. Isenyo, “Sectarian Violence.” 129. Kilete, “Military in Control.” 130. Salkida, Twitter, January 14, 2014. 131. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 32. 132. Ibid. 133. Tattersall, “Nigerian Sect.” 134. Salkida, “Sect Leader”; Sani, “Boko Haram.” 135. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 37. 136. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 200; Desert Herald, “Boko Haram Is a Conduit.” 137. SaharaTV, “Boko Haram Leader”; Valentine Odika Blog, “Maitatsine Bloodbath.” 138. Amaatbum, “Buji Foi.” 139. Tattersall, “Nigerian Sect”; Reuters, “Nigerian Muslim Cleric.” 140. Modern Ghana, “Death Toll.” 141. Ajani, “Small Group”; Malumfashi, “Behind the Gates.” 142. US Department of State, “Annual Report.” 143. Malumfashi, “Behind the Gates.” 144. Ammani, “Boko Haram Uprising.” 145. Cornell and Zenn, “Religion and the Secular State.” 146. Malumfashi, “Behind the Gates.” 147. Elbinawi, “Re:Shi’ites.” 148. Ansar, “I Wish You Goodluck.” 149. Salkida, Twitter, November 1, 2014. 150. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 38. 151. Vanguard, “Boko Haram Resurrects.” 152. Al-Awlaki, “Boko Haram.” 153. Ibid., post #46. 154. Ibid., post #41; US Embassy Abuja, “Nigeria.” 155. Frederick (Lord) Lugard was the British colonial administrator in Nigeria from 1900– 1919. 156. Al-Awlaki, “Boko Haram,” post #41. 157. Ibid., post #46, post #49, post #57. 158. Gusau and Dauda, “Borno Shivers.” 159. Anonymous journalist interviewing Abubakar Kambar.

7 The Role of al-Qaeda Affiliates

After July 2009, there were no reports that Boko Haram members were training or resurfacing anywhere in Nigeria. They were either underground in Maiduguri like Shekau, in other Nigerian towns, or abroad. The semblance of quietude, however, perpetuated complacency about Boko Haram while group members bided time and prepared for “guerrilla war.” During this time, Boko Haram leaders began formalizing their alliances with AQIM and al-Shabaab. Alliances with AQIM and al-Shabaab One of the first reported examples of Boko Haram’s outreach to foreign jihadists was when Muhammed Yusuf’s former third-in-command, Mamman Nur, facilitated group members’ travel to Somalia for training with alShabaab.1 The United States claimed Nur ran a training site in Cameroon, was among “90 extremists” under Shekau’s leadership traveling to Somalia, and “coordinated operations” with AQIM and distributed money to two suicide bombers.2 These were possibly the first two suicide bombers in Nigeria’s history, discussed in Chapter 8. There are two ways Nur might have contacted al-Shabaab. First, Nur was reportedly in Sudan in the mid-1990s, where he met Khalid al-Barnawi and future al-Shabaab members before returning to Nigeria and becoming Yusuf’s disciple.3 Nur, therefore, could have revived relationships with Somali jihadists or benefited from al-Barnawi’s contacting them after July 2009. Alternatively, Nur could have contacted al-Shabaab through Abubakar Kambar, who claimed to a journalist meeting him secretly in Kano that he developed communication lines through “one intermediary” to al-Zawahiri.4

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The UN found that al-Zawahiri designated a former Sudanese military officer to train African jihadists who were unable to reach Afghanistan, and that trainer was close to Ahmed Godane,5 who studied Islam in Sudan and Pakistan in the 1990s through scholarships from Saudi donors before becoming al-Shabaab’s leader when Aden Ayro was killed in US air strikes in 2008.6 The Boko Haram members’ training occurred, however, at a camp in Sudan near Kenya’s border, which later became South Sudan after its July 2011 secession from Sudan. The Sudanese military officer also reportedly traveled to Nigeria with the Boko Haram trainees three months before the group’s first June 2011 suicide bombing.7 Abubakar Kambar, or a militant resembling his profile, also became Boko Haram’s official intermediary to AQIM after July 2009. Such an intermediary was mentioned after the January 2011 kidnapping of two Frenchmen from a restaurant in Niamey, Niger by Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s independent, but AQIM-allied, group called Katibat al-Mulathamin (Veiled Brigade).8 The two Frenchmen and several kidnappers were killed shortly after the kidnapping when French forces fired on them as Katibat al-Mulathamin’s convoy was crossing Mali’s border. Weeks later, a Mauritanian who was arrested while conducting attacks in Mauritania for a joint Katibat al-MulathaminAQIM unit involving nationals from Guinea-Bissau, Algeria, and Mauritania, including one previously arrested with Amari Saifi in Chad in 2004, claimed a Boko Haram member scouted the Niamey restaurant where the two Frenchmen were kidnapped.9 Intercepted phone calls further revealed that Boko Haram scout was previously in Maiduguri and was a Nigerian “intermediary” who also maintained contacts to al-Shabaab in Somalia.10 This resembles Kambar because he was Boko Haram’s intermediary to the GSPC in 2006, and after his 2012 death Nigerian authorities described him as Boko Haram’s “main link” to al-Shabaab.11 Although the United States never provided reasons for Kambar’s 2012 terrorist designation alongside Shekau and Khalid alBarnawi, Kambar’s AQIM and al-Shabaab contacts might have contributed.12 The decision to establish an official Boko Haram–AQIM intermediary after July 2009 was made in meetings between Khalid al-Barnawi, Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi, and another follower of late Yusuf as “Shekau’s representatives” with AQIM southern commander Abu Zeid in mid-August 2009 at AQIM’s Sahel-based camps.13 Despite al-Barnawi’s reportedly feuding with Kambar before 2009, this would not preclude Abu Zeid and al-Barnawi from selecting Kambar as the intermediary.14 Just as the Mauritanian in Katibat al-Mulathamin’s Niamey kidnapping also participated in the joint Katibat al-Mulathamin-AQIM Mauritania plot weeks later despite Belmokhtar’s feuds with AQIM, Boko Haram and later Ansaru members also simultaneously conflicted and cooperated. The immediacy of Abu Zeid’s meeting with Shekau’s representatives around two weeks after Yusuf’s death demonstrated they were in Maiduguri

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during the July 2009 clashes or communicating with AQIM and Shekau immediately afterward. The meetings could not have been arranged at Abu Zeid’s secret camps so soon after Yusuf’s death but for established communication lines between AQIM and Yusuf’s followers during Yusuf’s lifetime. Although Yusuf never formally allied with AQIM, he must have known about, but deliberately concealed, followers’ ties to AQIM, especially through Khalid al-Barnawi, whom Yusuf reportedly sent several times to meet AQIM.15 During the mid-August 2009 meetings, four main matters were discussed: first, establishing a Niger-based intermediary between Shekau and AQIM’s leadership (possibly Kambar); second, AQIM’s supplying Boko Haram with funds and weapons; third, AQIM’s training two hundred Boko Haram members; and fourth, AQIM’s advising Boko Haram about waging jihad in Nigeria.16 Shekau’s representatives also told Abu Zeid that two hundred members were killed in the July 2009 clashes, which was fewer than the eight hundred deaths reported by Al Jazeera in August 2009 but might have referred only to Yusuf’s followers who died in Maiduguri.17 They also described the group’s weapons shortages; Yusuf’s centers in northern Nigeria and Diffa, Niger; and group members’ fleeing abroad or into Nigeria’s bush. They also compared Yusuf’s death to Muhammed Ali’s death, as mentioned in Chapter 2.18 AQIM committed to support Boko Haram on all matters.19 Before Abu Zeid wrote to Algerian AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel20 about these meetings, Droukdel released an August 19, 2009, statement about the previous month’s clashes. Repeating Al Jazeera’s death toll, Droukdel mentioned “brutal clashes . . . perpetrated by the evil Christian Nigerian army against around 800 Muslims” and decried the “unjust Crusade led by the Christian minority in Nigeria.” Droukdel also demanded the “one billion umma . . . not be silent about our Muslim brothers in Nigeria . . . led by martyr Shaikh Muhammad Yusuf.”21 This statement represented AQIM’s first time ever commenting publicly about Nigeria and venerating Yusuf by calling him a martyr and shaikh instead of casual terms in al-Qaeda’s lexicon like brother or mujahid. Moreover, Droukdel portrayed the clashes as Christians oppressing Muslims even though Nigeria’s president, Borno officials and preachers, and most security officers involved in the clashes were Muslims. Future AQIM-trained Boko Haram members would follow Droukdel’s advice and especially target Christians, despite Droukdel’s misrepresenting the clashes as Muslim-Christian hostilities. Nevertheless, if Droukdel wanted to receive credit from al-Qaeda Central for jihad in Nigeria, then dramatic internationally reported attacks on Christians and far enemy targets were necessary. Four days after Droukdel’s statement, Abu Zeid wrote correspondence to Droukdel dated August 23, 2009, describing his meetings with Shekau’s

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representatives. He noted the representatives were “well-known” to him and had previously lived with his Tariq ibn Ziyad brigade in Mali’s border region, and he confirmed they were sent by “the Nigerian group’s emir, Abubakar Shekau” and sought “strong ties” (irtibat qawiye) with AQIM. Abu Zeid also explained that he told them it would be easy to establish a Boko Haram–AQIM intermediary in Niger, but he preferred the intermediary’s identity to remain secret and never be written because if “news spread among brothers,” then intelligence agencies would track the intermediary and his “lifespan would be short.” This may be why Kambar’s name never appeared in AQIM or Boko Haram internal documents. Lastly, Abu Zeid told Droukdel he informed Shekau’s representatives that fighting in actual AQIM battles was the best training.22 In correspondence dated August 31, 2009, Droukdel responded to Abu Zeid by affirming Yusuf’s martyrdom and his “delight with the [Nigerian] delegation’s arrival,” which would engender “a new era confounding the Jewish-Crusader aggression plan towards Islam.” Droukdel also noted he welcomed “contacts and ties” (itisilat and irtibat) with Boko Haram, indicating his seriousness about the alliance. Otherwise he could have mentioned only itisilat (contacts) and not the stronger term in al-Qaeda’s lexicon, irtibat (ties). Droukdel further informed Abu Zeid that AQIM could train Boko Haram members, with the specific numbers and duration determined by AQIM’s southern commanders, who could also provide funds to Boko Haram. Similarly, Droukdel stated “specialized leadership” would provide weapons. He, therefore, delegated responsibility for coordinating with Boko Haram to Abu Zeid and AQIM’s southern command.23 Lastly, Droukdel vowed to publish messages from Boko Haram to make the group known to global jihadists and “expose crimes of the tawaghit [tyrant rulers] in Nigeria.” This meant AQIM’s new professionalized media agency launched in October 2009, al-Andalus, would assist Boko Haram in media dissemination and AQIM would receive some credit for Nigeria’s emergence as a land of jihad.24 However, Droukdel also offered advice for Boko Haram, arguing no jihad should be declared until three conditions were met: first, Boko Haram consulted with jihadist scholars; second, Nigerian Muslims supported the mujahidin; and, third, Nigerian jihadists acquired and trained in explosives. Droukdel nevertheless acknowledged AQIM would still “bless their decision” if they commenced jihad but would “advise them to concentrate on special operations (al-‘amal al-nuw‘aiya) in big cities and targeting criminal rulers, Western foreigners, and organizations specializing in spreading Christianity among Muslims, and to carefully avoid exposing Muslims and weak people to harm.”25 Droukdel’s targeting advice was, therefore, similar to Hamza Rabia’s advice for Boko Haram in 2004 and reflected how Droukdel internalized alQaeda Central’s strategy despite never fighting abroad. Rather Droukdel

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was a university student before joining the GSPC as a bomb-maker, succeeding Nabil Sahraoui after Sahraoui’s death, and then overseeing the GSPC’s becoming AQIM, which al-Zawahiri accepted on Bin Laden’s behalf.26 Droukdel also demonstrated lessons learned from the GIA’s counterproductive takfirism by urging Boko Haram to avoid harming “Muslims and weak people.” His advice influenced Nigerian jihadists who trained with AQIM and later formed Ansaru, but was rebuffed by Shekau, who remained in Nigeria and desired revenge against Nigeria’s government, including rank-and-file security officials and Islamic scholars, for supporting the July 2009 crackdown. Shekau only secondarily desired to attack Christians or Western foreigners. After Droukdel’s correspondence to Abu Zeid, another correspondence was sent from Abu Zeid to Shekau, dated December 13, 2009, calling Shekau “my representative” (mumaththili), which again indicated intimate ties. Abu Zeid confirmed that he told Khalid al-Barnawi and Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi that AQIM would pay the expenses for Boko Haram members to train with AQIM and that the number of trainees would depend on AQIM’s capabilities, but AQIM would determine how many trainees would return to Nigeria. This implied Abu Zeid intended to benefit from Boko Haram members’ training with AQIM because some trainees would fight with his brigade and not immediately return to Nigeria. Lastly, Abu Zeid noted a brother was selected to oversee the trainees.27 By 2010, therefore, AQIM and Boko Haram established an alliance that benefited both groups and by which Boko Haram formally joined the global jihadist movement and launched guerrilla war in Nigeria. They began implementing their plan, but not before AQIM informed Bin Laden about Shekau’s group. Al-Qaeda Priorities in Nigeria On January 3, 2010, AQIM wrote to Bin Laden about Boko Haram and the Sahel. AQIM urged “al-Qaeda Central (al-Qaeda al-Markeziya) to focus on [the Sahel] as general policy, which politically, militarily, and academically is as important as other fronts.” The correspondence was signed by “AQIM” and reminded Bin Laden about Droukdel’s previous April 2009 report.28 Both the correspondence and the report were found in Bin Laden’s compound in 2011. In the April 2009 report, Droukdel explained to Bin Laden that AQIM faced pressure from Algerian security forces and “outside Algeria, such as Mauritania, Libya and Nigeria . . . recruitment is apparently easier.” This indicated Nigerian fighters in AQIM ranks while Yusuf was living. Droukdel also requested Bin Laden “connect” AQIM “to our brothers in Somalia” to “improve cooperation and coordination and benefit us all.”29

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Bin Laden concurrently wrote correspondence dated “spring 2009” to Yunus al-Mauritani, who succeeded Abu Muhammed al-Yemeni as GSPC and later AQIM liaison to al-Qaeda, telling al-Mauritani he desired attacks on foreign oil tankers off the Nigerian, Ghanaian, Algerian, or Libyan coast. These would resemble the 2000 USS Cole attack or 2002 failed Strait of Gibraltar plot when al-Yemeni was in the region. Bin Laden also advised al-Mauritani that the trusted Libyan courier, Attiya, should coordinate with al-Shabaab and AQAP and suggested to al-Mauritani the “mujahidin in Nigeria” contact AQIM to plan attacks.30 Bin Laden’s instructions may have contributed to al-Mauritani’s advising Attiya to coordinate with al-Shabaab, resulting also in stronger communication lines from AQIM to al-Shabaab through Attiya, including to help Kambar, Nur, or Khalid al-Barnawi organize Nigerians’ East Africa–based trainings. This is because Attiya eventually served both as Bin Laden’s and al-Zawahiri’s liaison to al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Godane and as AQIM’s liaison to Bin Laden.31 If Kambar communicated with al-Zawahiri through “one intermediary” and became Boko Haram’s “main link” to al-Shabaab, then Attiya was in position to have been Kambar’s intermediary to them. The January 3, 2010, correspondence from AQIM to Bin Laden also compared “the Nigerian group’s ordeal” (al-mahna) to the 2007 crackdowns on pro-al-Qaeda militants in the Nahr al-Bared, northern Lebanon-based group Fatah al-Islam (Victory of Islam) and pro-Taliban worshippers at Pakistan’s Red Mosque, and noted that increasing numbers of Nigerians began traveling to the Sahel in the months after July 2009.32 This confirmed the trainings discussed by Shekau’s representatives and Abu Zeid commenced by 2010. AQIM’s Abu Numan also wrote that by 2010 “waves of youths started coming from Nigeria to the desert for training, and brothers in the desert trained them, and the cadres of Nigerian brothers who were in the desert returned [to Nigeria], and came under Abubakar Shekau’s command.”33 Before concluding the January 3, 2010, correspondence, AQIM informed Bin Laden “proposals are being made for cooperation because this group’s new leader [Shekau] sent us a delegation carrying a message requesting financial and military support.” The correspondence then included three attachments: one from Abu Zeid with “useful details”; another from “the Nigerian group’s emir,” referring to Shekau; and, lastly, AQIM’s “response to the [Nigerian] group.” AQIM also requested Bin Laden “advise us what to do so we can elevate our cooperation and coordination with [the ‘Nigerian group’] to higher levels and move our activities into all West Africa.”34 Notably, AQIM hoped to “lure” the United States into the Sahel’s “rugged front” and “drain [US] resources” to ease pressure on al-Qaeda elsewhere, presumably including Pakistan, which would benefit Bin Laden.35 On January 22, 2010, Saleh Abu Muhammed, the AQIM spokesman who had lived in Bin Laden’s Khartoum guesthouse with Hisham Abu Akram in

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the 1990s, wrote correspondence about Boko Haram addressed to Attiya, which further demonstrated AQIM’s direct contacts to Attiya.36 This correspondence, which was passed to Bin Laden and found in his compound when he was killed, included seven attachments. The first four mentioned AQIM’s status and fighters’ concerns about health, adultery, and marriage, while the fifth was a “letter from Nigerian imam Abubakar al-Nayjiri [Shekau]”37 and the sixth and seventh were copies of the August 23 and August 31 correspondences between Abu Zeid and Droukdel.38 By providing similar files to Bin Laden and Attiya on January 3 and January 22, 2010, AQIM and Saleh Abu Muhammed, respectively, ensured al-Qaeda Central was informed about AQIM’s dealings with Boko Haram. The “letter from Nigerian imam Abubakar al-Nayjiri” attached to Saleh Abu Muhammed’s correspondence to Attiya was not addressed to anyone specifically, but Shekau indicated he wanted to contact Bin Laden’s wakil (representative) about joining al-Qaeda. This wakil was likely Attiya because he was Bin Laden’s trusted courier and the letter’s eventual recipient. Always loyal, Attiya then provided Shekau’s letter to Bin Laden, which explains why it was found in his Pakistan compound in 2011. It also follows that if Shekau’s letter was transferred from Shekau to AQIM’s Saleh Abu Muhammed and then Attiya and finally Bin Laden, Attiya would have been able to transfer messages from other Boko Haram members to alZawahiri about Boko Haram’s trainings in East Africa because Attiya also liaised with al-Zawahiri and al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Godane. Shekau explained in his letter to Bin Laden’s wakil that he learned about al-Qaeda through audios and videos, not personal contacts. He also noted the group previously pledged loyalty to Muhammed Yusuf and offered praise of Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu-Yahya al-Libi, and jihadist ideologue Abu Qatada al-Filistini.39 During Abu Zeid’s August 2009 meeting with Shekau’s representatives, Abu Zeid asked if Boko Haram wanted to “form an organization” or “join an organization.” Shekau’s representatives replied Shekau would speak directly on that matter after recovering from injuries 40 According to Shekau’s letter to Bin Laden’s wakil, he wanted to form his own group and become an al-Qaeda affiliate. Bin Laden’s other correspondences to Attiya revealed concerns that affiliates could undermine al-Qaeda’s reputation by recklessly harming Muslim civilians and cause the United States to escalate pressure on those affiliates because of their associations with al-Qaeda.41 This is among reasons why Bin Laden never publicly announced al-Shabaab’s affiliation during his lifetime despite al-Shabaab’s Godane declaring Labbaika ya Osama (“At Your Service, Osama”) in a 2009 video and Bin Laden privately recognizing al-Qaeda’s “unity” (wihda) with al-Shabaab in 2010.42 Only after Bin Laden’s May 2011 death did al-Zawahiri and Godane co-announce alShabaab’s affiliation in 2012.43 Shekau’s letter would not have assuaged

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Bin Laden’s concerns. Therefore, Bin Laden might have been wary and rebuffed a public Nigerian affiliate. Nevertheless, Bin Laden still welcomed attacks on US targets in Nigeria (or off its coast) and delegated responsibility to Attiya and Yunus al-Mauritani for communicating with AQIM and alShabaab and tasked al-Zawahiri with following AQIM’s affairs.44 In contrast to Bin Laden, Droukdel prioritized the Boko Haram alliance and expanding jihad deeper into West Africa. This was necessary for AQIM because Algerian counterterrorism pressure forced AQIM brigades from Algeria southward into the Sahel. In addition, Droukdel differed from Bin Laden because Droukdel recommended Nigerian targets less about US economic interests, which Bin Laden desired, and more about symbolism, like major government buildings, Westerners, and churches, despite church attacks being controversial among al-Qaeda commanders.45 Droukdel’s contrasting priorities with Bin Laden may have surfaced when Droukdel ordered Abu Zeid to provide “200,000 euros” ($250,000) to Boko Haram from “AQIM’s account” in July 5, 2010, correspondence. Droukdel also noted future sums could be added and indicated he sent previous correspondence with this same instruction for Abu Zeid, but Abu Zeid either never received that correspondence or, if he did receive it, he never acted on it, thus requiring Droukdel to write again on July 5.46 Abu Zeid may have ignored the first instruction because he preferred the €200,000 to benefit his brigade similar to his mandating some Boko Haram trainees remain with his brigade and not immediately return to Nigeria in his December 2009 correspondence to Shekau. Nevertheless, Droukdel wanted Boko Haram to have that money enough to send Abu Zeid the reminder. In correspondence by context written after July 4, 2010, but before October 2010, Bin Laden also instructed Attiya to “suggest” Droukdel provide “approximately 200,000 euros” to Yunus al-Mauritani.47 The similarity in timing between Droukdel’s July 5 correspondence ordering Abu Zeid for a second time to provide “200,000 euros” to Boko Haram and Bin Laden’s post–July 4 correspondence requesting Droukdel provide that same amount to al-Mauritani indicates Bin Laden may have known Droukdel had an expendable €200,000. This could have been the case if that €200,000 derived from ransom negotiations brought to al-Qaeda Central’s attention, as Droukdel desired during the 2008 Robert Fowler kidnapping and subsequent kidnappings of Westerners.48 Although Bin Laden preferred Droukdel provide €200,000 to Yunus al-Mauritani, whom Bin Laden respected as a “shaikh,” for al-Mauritani’s external operations, Droukdel still provided the €200,000 to Boko Haram through Abu Zeid, but not necessarily without informing al-Mauritani or acting against what Droukdel believed were alQaeda’s best interests.49 Droukdel’s commitment to Boko Haram was evidenced not only by his twice ordering Abu Zeid to provide the €200,000 to Boko Haram and his

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August 2009 condolences for Yusuf’s martyrdom, but also by his additional February 2, 2010, announcement about Boko Haram released by al-Andalus. The announcement stated the “infidel West colluded with perpetrators of genocide (ibada) against Muslims in Nigeria” and asserted AQIM was “ready to train your sons and provide them support, men, weapons, ammunition, and equipment to enable them to defend our Muslim brothers in Nigeria in confrontation with Christian minority aggression.”50 Thus, Droukdel publicly announced support AQIM was providing to Boko Haram clandestinely. His announcement was followed by other jihadist writers, including pro-al-Qaeda Jund Ansar Allah’s Abu Khalid al-Sayyaf in Gaza, who promoted groups on the Muslim world’s periphery, including Uighurs and Indonesians, recognizing Yusuf’s martyrdom and shaming Arabs and Muslims for ignoring Boko Haram.51 Droukdel’s announcement, therefore, heralded broader al-Qaeda messaging highlighting the global jihad’s expansion to Nigeria. Al-Qaeda Welcomes Boko Haram Droukdel’s February 2010 announcement fulfilled the promise in his August 2009 letter to Abu Zeid to make Boko Haram known among global jihadists. Another previous example of AQIM’s promoting Nigerian jihadists was the January 2010 AQIM video released by al-Andalus, “Join the Caravan,” featuring narration about Abdullah Azzam, who wrote the book called Join the Caravan, interviews of Algerian Afghan jihad veterans who met Azzam and Bin Laden in Afghanistan, and scenes of various AQIM training camps, including “the martyr Abu Muhammed al-Yemeni camp.”52 One scene also featured a “training camp in the Sahara under commander brother Yahya’s supervision” with a veiled trainer and an interview with a Hausa-speaking Nigerian (Abu Ammar al-Nayjiri), who struggled with Arabic and switched to Hausa and seemed new to training because he almost mixed up the GSPC’s and AQIM’s names in his speech. He was with co-trainees in the desert, who probably included Boko Haram members arriving in the Sahel in late 2009.53 AQIM’s December 2009 timestamp for the video and its featuring clips from a June 2009 Abu Yahya alLibi sermon calling on Muslims to join AQIM to fight Algeria’s government also suggests its scenes were filmed in late 2009 when Boko Haram members arrived in the Sahel for training. The camp supervisor, “Yahya,” was probably the Algerian Yahya Djouadi (alias Abu Ammar) because he was appointed by Droukdel to oversee all AQIM Sahara region commanders, including Abu Zeid, but Belmokhtar rejected Djouadi’s authority and claimed he “lacked skill and experience.”54 Moreover, Shekau requested in an October 2010 thank-you letter to Abu Zeid for him to “send my greetings” to Droukdel and “Abu Ammar, Sahara region emir,” which was probably because Droukdel

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authorized Abu Zeid to support Boko Haram and Yahya Djouadi oversaw the training of Boko Haram members.55 In that thank-you letter, Shekau also acknowledged AQIM’s “generosity,” implying the trainings, if not also financial provisions, were beneficial.56 Belmokhtar’s rejection of Djouadi’s authority and feud with Abu Zeid, however, implies Belmokhtar was not directly involved in training Boko Haram members in the months after July 2009.57 Nevertheless, Belmokhtar-led Katibat al-Mulathamin still cooperated with Nigerian jihadists, including in the January 2011 kidnapping of the Frenchmen in Niamey. After that video, in March 2010, al-Andalus released another AQIM video from Algerian AQIM shura member and president of AQIM’s elders’ council Abu Ubaydah Yusuf.58 Addressing “brothers in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria,” he argued Africa reached “peak glory” under Islamic civilization and experienced “slavery, weakness, and humiliation under Crusaders, Europeans, and Americans.”59 Incorporating Nigeria into this message indicated Nigeria was on AQIM’s radar, while AQIM’s first ever use of French subtitles in a video demonstrated AQIM’s increasing focus on recruiting francophone West Africans. One month later, in April 2010, al-Andalus released another AQIM video, “Raid of al-Damus,” about ambushing Algerian military convoys.60 However, it also featured scenes of Nigerian security forces’ killing and mocking Boko Haram members in the July 2009 clashes, which Al Jazeera broadcast in February 2010 as “exclusive footage” of “Nigerian security forces kill[ing] ‘unarmed civilians.’”61 This again indicated AQIM’s growing interest in Nigeria, if not also al-Qaeda’s “intersection of interests” with Al Jazeera, which promoted narratives of “Muslim victimhood,” including Yusuf’s followers at that time.62 Al-Shabaab also promoted the jihad in Nigeria in an April 2010 video, “Dedicated to People of Tawhid [Monotheism] in Nigeria,” featuring a meeting in Somalia hosted by American al-Shabaab member Abu Mansur al-Amriki (“the American”)63 and Ahmed Godane.64 Al-Shabaab later addressed a January 2011 video to the “giants of northern Nigeria” in addition to jihadists from the Islamic Maghreb, the Arabian Peninsula, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.65 Concurrently, Boko Haram members were training with the former Sudanese military officer in contact with Godane. Like AQIM, therefore, al-Shabaab’s public support for Nigerian jihadists and incorporating northern Nigeria into the lands of jihad correlated with privately helping Nigerian jihadists. In August 2010, al-Andalus released another AQIM video, “Fighting Is Prescribed for You,” featuring fighters delivering sermons in Mauritanian Hassaniya Arabic, Fulani, Tuareg, Guinean Portuguese, French, and Hausa in the case of one Nigerian (Abu Muhjin al-Nayjiri) who spoke about establishing sharia.66 The most prominent speakers were Hamadou Kheiry, who

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read Hassaniya poetry; Oumar Hamaha (as Oumar al-Tuaregi), who preached in Tuareg; and Mauritanian commander Abdullah al-Shinqiti,67 who asked, “Don’t you see what happens to our brothers in Palestine, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Sudan?” and called for jihad.68 Abdullah al-Shinqiti later became AQIM’s point person to Ansaru’s founders, discussed in the next chapter. Another poet’s mourning the Mauritanian martyr Abu Obeida Musa al-Basri, who committed the August 8, 2009, suicide bombing targeting France’s embassy in Nouakchott, Mauritania, indicated the video must have been filmed when Boko Haram members were arriving in the Sahel in late 2009.69 The AQIM-led messaging campaign about Nigeria also extended to alQaeda’s most prominent affiliate, Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), which in 2010 coordinated media narratives and styles with AQIM, al-Shabaab, and AQAP. In April 2010, ISI for the first time listed Nigeria among jihadist theaters in a statement from its “sharia minister.”70 This was the highest level al-Qaeda mention of Nigeria since Bin Laden’s February 2003 statement aired by Al Jazeera. Later, in November 2010, ISI released another video in its “Knights of Martyrdom” series dedicated to “the African giants, who are strong dark-skinned men with white hearts and disrupt Christian proselytization and Westernization campaigns,” featuring a map of West Africa in which Nigeria was magnified. 71 Although this reflected racialized understandings of Nigeria, it represented ISI’s attempt to promote a country like Nigeria on the periphery of the Muslim world to Middle East–oriented jihadists. Moreover, the video presaged similar attempts by ISI’s successor, IS, to promote Nigeria when Boko Haram formally joined IS in 2015, discussed in Chapter 10. ISI’s November 2010 video was aberrational, however, because it proceeded to make statements about Nigeria that required some in-depth knowledge. For example, it called January 2010 Muslim-Christian clashes in Jos “the extension of massacres committed against Muslims for more than twenty years”; claimed Nigeria’s government “colluded” in the July 2009 clashes; blamed “Arab media” like Al Jazeera for reporting “MuslimChristian power struggles” in Nigeria and not “organized anti-Muslim Crusader campaigns”; stated “Christians hoped to declare Nigeria a Christian country in 2000,” referring to Reinhard Bonnke; and thanked AQIM for “supporting their [Nigerian] brothers,” referring to Droukdel’s announcement.72 This was too detailed for ISI to narrate without Nigerian input. Either Boko Haram, through couriers, provided talking points to Iraqi jihadists, or ISI obtained information from major jihadist web forums like Shumukh al-Islam (Glory of Islam) or the minor and more moderate Ana al-Muslim (I am Muslim) that featured conspiratorial articles about Nigeria. Ana al-Muslim, for example, posted—and Shumukh al-Islam reposted—a

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2010 interview of Dawood Imran, the emir of the pro-Hamas and Salafiharaki (activist) group, Jama‘at Ta‘awunil Muslimeen (Group for Muslim Cooperation) in southwest Nigeria, who alleged southern Nigeria was the “new Bosnia”; Bill Gates provided $200 million to Nigerian Christians; and US Africa Command (AFRICOM), launched in 2007, desired a “Christian state” in Nigeria.73 Such claims resembled ISI’s video narration and other jihadist magazine articles about Nigeria in 2010, including in AQAP’s Sada al-Malahim (Echo of Battles) and Al-Mushtaqun (The Yearners), which was edited by an Egyptian jihadist.74 Al-Qaeda affiliates’ support for Boko Haram enabled them to stake a claim. If jihad in Nigeria succeeded, it would bolster their legitimacy and promote al-Qaeda’s narrative of an expanding global jihadist movement capable of defending Muslims and attacking Western-backed governments and Western targets on a global battlefield. Al-Qaeda affiliates, therefore, had interests in Nigerian jihadists’ success and contributed rhetorically and, especially in AQIM’s case, materially to the Nigerian jihadists. Al-Qaeda Central finally staked its claim when its al-Sahab (The Cloud) media agency released Abu Yahya al-Libi’s September 2011 video addressed to “Muslims of Algeria,” declaring “branches of [AQIM’s] tree blessed jihad in the desert, whose shade reached the land of Muslim Nigeria.”75 While such statements were not reported in mainstream media or known to ordinary Nigerians, they signaled support to Boko Haram. Al-Qaeda supporters, in turn, believed al-Libi took credit for Boko Haram’s emergence.76 Reaching Nigerian Audiences Coinciding with global jihadist interest in Nigeria, Boko Haram conveyed messages about relaunching the jihad to Hausa- and English-speakers in northern Nigeria despite prohibitions on preaching publicly. Two “accredited” al-Fallujah jihadist web forum members, which indicates forum administrators understood them to be actual jihadists, also discussed Boko Haram messaging. The first member originally posted Droukdel’s February 2010 announcement, and the second member, whose alias was Abu Dujanah al-Tunisi, was a Tunisian AQIM member also called “aqim007.”77 This was presumably a conscious reference to fictional British intelligence officer James Bond, exemplifying how jihadists appropriated enemy themes, including the nickname of Muhammed Ashafa’s assistant, Maradona, and beheading victims who wore Guantanamo-style jumpsuits. Perhaps based on inside knowledge, al-Tunisi wrote, “English is Nigeria’s official language,” and noted Boko Haram members and their families were learning Arabic. He then requested a Nigerian, Abu Khubab alNayjiri, to join the forum.78 One forum member then posted a hyperlink to al-Nayjiri’s translation to Hausa of Droukdel’s announcement and al-

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Nayjiri’s message stating, “For the first time, an al-Qaeda statement in Hausa of Nigeria,” while the statement’s English version was also posted to Anwar al-Awlaki’s blog.79 Al-Nayjiri subsequently joined the forum and wrote that “global websites” like Reuters that reported Droukdel’s announcement only included snippets and could “misrepresent” al-Qaeda. He, therefore, proposed al-Qaeda post future statements about Nigeria on the al-Fallujah forum that his team could translate into Hausa and post on Nigerian chat forums and Facebook to measure audience response.80 Al-Nayjiri also noted reaching “poor, weak Muslims not knowing the Internet” required his team to launch text message campaigns. In 2010, only 3 percent of Nigerian Hausa-speakers used the Internet, but al-Nayjiri recognized “most people have mobile phones.”81 Al-Nayjiri may have lived in Ghana because he cited as a model for Nigerian text message campaigns a case where rumors about impending earthquakes caused by “cosmic rays” went viral through Ghanaians’ text messages.82 Similarly, al-Nayjiri hoped text messages could spread in Nigeria if his team employed sensational Hausa headlines like “Al-Qaeda Takes Revenge on Christians and Kills Them All” or “Mujahidin Are Coming to Help Muslims in Jos.”83 Another indication al-Nayjiri was in Ghana was his separate post on the Shumukh al-Islam jihadist web forum about “Nigerians and a Ghanaian” who conducted AQIM’s November 2009 kidnapping of three Spanish aid workers in Nouadhibou, Mauritania.84 Sources close to Mauritania’s security agencies also believed sub-Saharan Africans, and specifically Nigerians, conducted that kidnapping.85 Although the kidnappers’ identities were never publicized, al-Nayjiri’s communications with actual AQIM members and his post’s lack of refutation supported his claim. Furthermore, al-Nayjiri’s mention of “weak Muslims” and Christians in Jos, AQIM ties, and media acumen imply he later joined Ansaru. This is because Ansaru also focused on “weak Muslims,” targeted Jos-based Christians, and had AQIM ties and more sophisticated media than Boko Haram. If Nigerians conducted the Nouadhibou kidnapping, it might also explain why Droukdel demanded twice that Abu Zeid provide €200,000 to Boko Haram by July 5, 2010. AQIM exchanged one woman hostage in March 2010 for a multimillion-euro ransom before the two male hostages were exchanged in August 2010 for the operation’s arrested organizer, Belmokhtar’s cotrafficker Omar al-Sahrawi.86 The Nigerian journalist who met Abubakar Kambar learned the €200,000 provided to Boko Haram was owed to Khalid al-Barnawi because of his role overseeing an AQIM kidnapping.87 This was possibly the Nouadhibou operation. Abu Zeid fulfilled Droukdel’s demand to provide €200,000 to Boko Haram despite possibly wanting the money for himself and becoming disgruntled over the Spaniards’ release. Abu Zeid believed the male hostages deserved death as punishment for a July 2010 French-Mauritanian joint

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rescue attempt of another Mali-based French hostage and French company Areva employee, Michael Germaneau. Although it led to the deaths of six members of AQIM’s Sahel-based and Tuareg-led al-Ansar brigade and to Abu Zeid’s executing Germaneau, Moustapha Limam Chafi, a Mauritanian businessman and mediator between AQIM and regional governments, convinced Belmokhtar the rescue attempt was not Spain’s fault and, like Robert Fowler’s release, Belmokhtar defied Abu Zeid by freeing the two male hostages. 88 This made Abu Zeid further resent Belmokhtar even though he still provided funds to Belmokhtar’s accomplice, Khalid alBarnawi, who stewarded the €200,000 for Boko Haram. Abu Zeid’s frustration might also explain why AQIM did not cooperate after al-Barnawi’s first Chafi-mediated kidnapping of Westerners in Nigeria in May 2011, discussed in the next chapter. Besides Abu Khubab al-Nayjiri, other Nigerians exploited the Internet to prepare for jihad. In March 2010, for example, Abu Muhammed al-Maqdisi responded to questions on his website from a Nigerian follower of the “Salafi-jihadi current” claiming involvement in “the Boko Haram incidents.” Al-Maqdisi urged him “not to rush jihad” and to become a “proficient scholar” because that was needed in Nigeria.89 An Algerian jihadist scholar on al-Maqdisi’s website’s sharia committee also issued a fatwa arguing that Nigerians must choose between the “religion of Islam” or the “religion of democracy,” and that evidence from Algeria in 1991, Gaza in 2006, and Cote d’Ivoire in 2010 proved the West manipulated election results to ensure their “agents” won.90 Like al-Maqdisi and Droukdel, this scholar also believed Boko Haram should not declare jihad prematurely. However, Shekau impatiently desired revenge and rejected their advice. In February 2010, a jihadist web forum member also wrote that he participated in a workshop organized by Abu Khubab al-Nayjiri on the Shumukh al-Islam forum for “Nigerian brothers.”91 This indicated al-Nayjiri trained Nigerians in messaging. By the one-year anniversary of the July 2009 clashes, therefore, Boko Haram members understood new media’s value in disseminating messages to and inspiring followers. The first post–July 2009 proof-of-life images of Shekau emerged when a journalist was taken in blindfold to Shekau’s Maiduguri hideout in April 2010. The unbranded interview video later circulated on mobile phones on the one-year anniversary of the July 2009 clashes. Revealing a new style, Shekau appeared as a jihadist scholar with a turban, rifle, and stack of Islamic books behind him resembling Bin Laden’s pre-9/11 interviews in Afghanistan.92 Shekau also declared himself Yusuf’s successor and vowed revenge for the July 2009 killings.93 In a second unbranded video circulating on mobile phones, Shekau was surrounded by two armed men in military fatigues. He stated, “Most of our fighters escaped . . . and are still around and ready to fight.”94 However,

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Nigerian security forces ignored Shekau’s statements because they believed Boko Haram was finished and Shekau was dead. Finally, in a third unbranded video circulating around July 2010, there were scenes of Boko Haram fighters training, before the camera shifted to the turbaned Shekau. He declared, “we have certainly begun jihad in Nigeria” and that he would behead “hypocrites,” especially Izala scholars, who Shekau claimed were “allied with government leaders appointed by European colonialism to undermine Islam.”95 The video concluded by introducing the group’s new name: “Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad in the land called Nigeria.”96 Boko Haram also released a July 12, 2010, written message in Arabic on the one-year hijri anniversary of Yusuf’s “Open Letter” sermon, which was posted on the Ansar al-Mujahideen forum by a Boko Haram media member requesting support from jihadists.97 The post also featured Boko Haram’s new logo including a Quran and crossed rifles. The message was signed in Shekau’s name from “Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad in some lands of Africa called Nigeria” and intended more for global jihadist audiences than the Hausa videos circulating on mobile phones.98 Shekau also demonstrated a more sophisticated understanding of al-Qaeda’s style compared to his 2009 letter for Bin Laden’s wakil by quoting Abdullah Azzam; offering “martyrdom condolences” for two ISI leaders, who were Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s successors and Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s predecessors; and sending greetings to Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, Abu Yahya alLibi, Droukdel, and al-Shabaab commander Mokhtar Robow,99 who studied Islamic law at the University of Khartoum in the mid-1990s and led al-Shabaab for several months before Ahmed Godane became leader in 2008. In addition, Shekau greeted emirs in Chechnya, Kashmir, Pakistan, and the Arabian Peninsula, but without mentioning their names. His message indicated to forum members Nigeria was “a new front” and Boko Haram would “merge” with AQIM.100 Also circulating were Hausa video nasheeds, revealing that Shekau was developing prophetic status among followers, like Yusuf before him. Lyrics described Shekau as “the hero, masquerade [fearful figure] for Jews and infidels, and problem for Western nations” and stated “our name is al-Qaeda, if you are looking for terrorists, we are here telling you we hate Americans.”101 Another Hausa video nasheed integrated Nigerian and international themes. It included images of Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Hamas’s Ahmed Yassin, Saudi Arabia–born Chechnya-based jihadist Ibn alKhattab, and al-Shabaab fighters, choruses affirming the group’s name was “not Boko Haram,” praise of “the martyred scholar Muhammed Yusuf,” and denunciations of CAN, which was “gathering weapons and killing Muslims”; Thisday, which was “not forgiven” for blaspheming Prophet Muhammed; and Nigeria’s Constitution, which was “created by the world’s unbelievers.” That

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nasheed especially condemned Izala, whose “scholars . . . say politics is better than prayers,” (siyasa tafi muhimmanchi da sallah) referring to Abubakar Gumi’s controversial 1980s claim that Muslims should stay in Nigeria to vote for Muslim leaders when elections conflicted with pilgrimage to Mecca.102 The nasheed further asserted, “We should not follow America’s system. . . . The only system we follow is Allah’s,” and reiterated Shekau’s centrality, calling him “the lion” and “al-Zarqawi’s and Osama’s representative in Nigeria.” Finally, the nasheed asserted, “we do not oppose you [Shekau]. . . . Everyone wanting to fight jihad should follow you.”103 Except for references specific to Boko Haram’s history and al-Qaeda, the religio-political discourses in these nasheeds resembled those already seen from al-Zakzaky’s followers one decade earlier, whose slogan was “At your service, Zakzaky” (Labbaika ya Zakzaky). His followers’ most prominent poet, for example, wrote, “the only way . . . to establish sharia, is through jihad, not by political parties.” Another poem stated, “We have answered the call of Islam, the Constitution is therefore rejected,” and a third poem asserted, “The system of government you [Nigeria] run is directed and designed by America. . . . It is the Quranic system that will last, but not America’s. . . . We only worship Allah alone, not American infidels.”104 Boko Haram encapsulated this sentiment in the era of al-Qaeda and a time of jihad in Nigeria led by Shekau. Boko Haram attitudes were also conveyed through Agence FrancePresse journalist Aminu Abubakar’s March 2010 interviews with five members, who told him they planned “fiercer attacks than Iraqi or Afghan mujahideen against our enemies throughout the world, particularly the U.S. . . . but for now our attention is focused on Nigeria.” They also declared loyalty to Mullah Umar and Bin Laden and stated “repression” made them more determined to “oust the secular regime and entrench a just Islamic government.”105 Like Aminu Tashen-Ilmi’s 2006 interview with Aminu Abubakar, these members’ perspectives were global despite limiting operations to Nigeria. Prior to these interviews, Burkinabe officials informed US officials that students from Niger were recruited from a Nigerian Quranic school and operated along Mali’s border, where veteran Mauritanian AQIM commander Abubakar al-Shinqiti and his Nigerian deputy were killed years later.106 French officials also reported AQIM and Boko Haram were in “direct contact” by January 2010.107 Several months later, in June 2010, Algerian experts asserted that AQIM desired attacks in Nigeria and an alliance with Boko Haram.108 However, denialism persisted about Boko Haram in Nigeria, including from Borno’s police chief, who asserted “rumors of attacks” were the “handiwork of some people to create panic” and Shekau was killed in July 2009.109 Videos circulating on mobile phones of the purportedly dead Shekau were also regarded as “digital mock-

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ups.”110 Yet, when jihad recommenced in September 2010 on Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday marking Ramadan’s end, Shekau-led Boko Haram’s resurgence could no longer be ignored. Souring Relations with AQIM Before Eid al-Fitr, Boko Haram members recorded themselves indicating on a Bauchi map where they planned to break into the city’s prison.111 They also sent statements to Bauchi’s government asserting their members would not spend Eid al-Fitr behind bars. However, government officials called their threats “a joke.”112 During Eid al-Fitr prayers, rows of worshippers extended from the emir’s mosque to prison walls 300 yards away. During prostration, fifty Boko Haram members jumped up, pulled guns from their gowns, and detonated explosives at Bauchi prison’s perimeter precisely: wall damage was large enough to allow fighters’ ingress and exit through holes, but not so large walls crumbled and blocked them or prison escapees.113 The fighters also killed two guards and burned prison vehicles so there would be no chase of the 750 freed prisoners, including 150 members imprisoned in the July 2009 clashes who were now able to relaunch the jihad.114 Boko Haram also circulated two leaflets in Bauchi. The first reiterated the group’s name was not Boko Haram but Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad, and the second asserted the group was founded “eight to nine years ago” and blamed “government agents” like Izala for “helping the oppressive government kill and arrest our members.” That second leaflet also claimed that “fighting this government is obligatory” and government officials’ wives and children would become “widows and orphans” if officials continued arresting group members.115 This presaged Boko Haram’s considering anyone who was not fighting jihad or who was cooperating with authorities as legitimate targets. The prison break occurred after a ward head and a retired police officer were assassinated in Borno. In October 2010, other Borno and Bauchi politicians were assassinated, as was leading Maiduguri-based Izala preacher, Bashir Kashara, who was close to Muhammed Yusuf before becoming a “vocal critic” of Boko Haram.116 Although this fulfilled Shekau’s desire for revenge on “government agents,” it contradicted Droukdel’s advice to not immediately wage jihad or kill Islamic scholars whose support was needed for waging jihad. By October 2010, Boko Haram also retained ties to AQIM, but they were souring because Shekau ignored AQIM’s advice. On October 2, for example, al-Andalus for the first time ever released a statement on behalf of another group: this was Boko Haram’s Eid al-Fitr message from Shekau featuring an image of Shekau with a green headdress and rifle. The message included a

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lengthy theological discussion explaining that Boko Haram “preaches for Islam and jihad.” Citing Saudi Salafi scholar Bakr Abu Zayd, who was also cited in Yusuf’s 2007 book on his aqida, Shekau reaffirmed that Boko Haram disavows “boko, meaning Western colonist foreign international schools containing polytheism and atheism,” the “Magi [Zoroastrian] Shia,” and “Nigeria’s government . . . that kills Muslims, destroys their mosques, and urinates on the Quran.”117 Resembling Yusuf’s critiques of Izala scholars’ urging him not to wage jihad, Shekau also indirectly responded to Droukdel and al-Qaeda ideologues who were “discouraging jihad” in Nigeria because of “lack of complete preparation and ability.” Shekau claimed “this kind of talk aims only to close the door of jihad.” To justify his positions, and possibly to impress AQIM’s North African leaders who desired Andalusia’s reconquest, Shekau cited the tenth-century, eleventh-century, and fourteenthcentury Andalusian theologians, Ibn Abd al-Barr, al-Qurtubi, and Abu Hayyan al-Andalusi, and a twentieth-century Andalusia-descended Tunisian theologian, Muhammad al-Tahir Ibn-Ashur al-Tunisi, as well as contemporary scholars, including MWL’s general-secretary. Shekau concluded by offering condolences for the martyrdom of jihadist leaders in Iraq, Pakistan, and Dagestan and praising Mullah Umar, Bin Laden, Abubakar al-Baghdadi, Droukdel, and Mukhtar Robow, as well as jihadists in Kashmir, Chechnya, Yemen, and Pakistan.118 Al-Andalus’s release of Shekau’s message again publicized Boko Haram to global jihadists and demonstrated Shekau’s increasing familiarity with al-Qaeda’s style compared to his 2009 letter to Bin Laden’s wakil. However, Shekau’s message also conveyed his resistance to AQIM leaders’ and jihadist scholars’ urging patience before waging jihad. Another indication AQIM and Boko Haram retained ties by Eid alFitr was that, according to Abu Numan, more than twenty “Nigerian brothers” participated in AQIM’s September 17, 2010, ambush that killed Mauritanian troops in Hassi Sidi, Mali.119 The attack also led to AQIM’s pilfering weapons and was commanded by Algerian AQIM al-Furqan brigade leader, Jemal Oukacha, and involved Abubakar al-Shinqiti. 120 Oukacha also plotted AQIM’s suicide bombing of France’s embassy in Nouakchott one year earlier.121 Because Abu Numan joined a fifty-fighter unit deployed by Oukacha to southwestern Mali’s Wagadou Forest that subsequently received Hassi Sidi battle veterans, and “especially Nigerian recruits,” Abu Numan wrote that he learned from other AQIM members that Hassi Sidi spoils were donated to Nigerian jihadists, who rendered them to Nigeria.122 According to Abu Aisha, Khalid al-Barnawi trafficked the weapons into Nigeria after “escaping a French hostage–taking incident.”123 This likely referred to the January 2011 Niamey kidnapping of the two Frenchmen by Belmokhtar-led Katibat al-Mulathamin, which involved the Nigerian “scout” and intermediary from Boko Haram, if not also other Nigerians.

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A further example of strong, but souring, AQIM–Boko Haram ties was Shekau’s October 10, 2010, thank-you letter to Abu Zeid in which he sent greetings to Droukdel and Yahya Djouadi. While Shekau affectionately called Abu Zeid “my uncle” and “our trainer” and stated, “whenever I want to write thanks to you I run out of room” and “our jihad is your jihad,” he also acknowledged “news of problems among the brothers” in the Sahel. Nevertheless, he reminded Abu Zeid to be patient and that the “taste of [patience] is bitter, but its outcomes are sweeter than honey.”124 Such problems were mentioned by Abu Numan, who wrote that delegations from Nigeria “came, received training, and returned [to Nigeria] with weapons, money, and support” until AQIM learned that Shekau ordered fighters to “steal from Muslims living under the infidel government.”125 Therefore, AQIM ceased training Boko Haram members even though some Nigerian jihadists still traveled between Nigeria and Mali, including a trainer and arms importer and Yusuf’s former chief imam at Ibn Taymiyya mosque, although both were arrested.126 Informing AQIM about Shekau was Nigerian jihadist Abu Muslim alIbrahimi, who, according to Abu Numan, traveled with Khalid al-Barnawi to the Sahel after the July 2009 clashes. Al-Ibrahimi wrote a treatise lamenting Shekau’s “making fair game the blood and wealth of the umma” and urging adherence to the path of munsifun (moderates).127 AQIM respected al-Ibrahimi enough that Mauritanian AQIM commander Abdullah Abu al-Hassan al-Shinqiti128 called al-Ibrahimi a “shaikh” and “exemplary seeker of knowledge of the jihadi trend” (al-tayyar al-jihadi).129 AlIbrahimi’s treatise, therefore, prompted Abdullah Abu al-Hassan al-Shinqiti to write his own correspondence countering Shekau’s position on takfir, but Abu Numan noted Shekau ignored it and increased his “deviance and extremism” (al-inhiraf wal-ghuluw).130 It is understandable how AQIM was persuaded by al-Ibrahimi because Shekau’s letter to Bin Laden’s wakil, Eid al-Fitr message, and thank-you letter were overly affectionate, demonstrated stubbornness, and contained rambling discussions, in contrast to AQIM’s more eloquent style.131 This might have triggered alarm among AQIM commanders, which was reinforced by negative reports about Shekau from Boko Haram trainees, including Abu Muslim al-Ibrahimi. The once promising AQIM–Boko Haram alliance was, therefore, souring and ultimately resulted in AQIM-trained Nigerian jihadists’ soliciting AQIM’s advice before separating from Shekau.

1. Vanguard, “How Nur.” 2. US Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Sanctions.”

Notes

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3. Nasrullah, “Survival and Expansion,” 21. 4. Anonymous journalist interviewing Abubakar Kambar interview. 5. Alias: Mukhtar Abu Zubayr; killed in US drone strikes in Somalia in 2014. 6. Chothia, “Ahmed Abdi Godane.” 7. UN Security Council, “Letter Pursuant,” 66–67. 8. Al Jazeera, “Katibat al-Mulathamin.” See also AQIM, “Answers,” 7, 9. 9. Guibert, “Comment”; RFI, “Une Piste Nigériane”; Moustapha, “Aqmi passé aux véhicules.” 10. Dougueli, “Nigeria.” 11. Vanguard, “JTF Claims.” 12. Bureau of Counterterrorism, “Terrorist Designations.” 13. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 2. 14. Agence France-Presse, “Barnawi.” 15. Aisha interview, 2019; Nasrullah, Twitter, August 16, 2019. 16. Zeid, Letter to Abu Musab. 17. Al Jazeera, “Nigerian Police.” 18. Zeid, letter to Abu Musab. 19. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 2–4; Zeid, letter to Abu Musab. 20. Alias: Abu Musab Abd al-Wadud. For his bio, see Ouazani, “Ben Laden.” 21. Droukdel, “Condolence Statement.” 22. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 2–3. 23. Ibid., 4–5. 24. Ibid.; AQIM, “Announcing Al-Andalus.” 25. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 4–5. 26. Droukdel, “Statement and Greetings”; al-Zawahiri, “Interview,” part 5, 5:24. 27. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 5–6. 28. AQIM, “Report,” 1–6. 29. Hisham, “Dear Brother,” 9–10. 30. Bin Laden, “Second Letter,” 10. 31. Lahoud, “Letters from Abbottabad,” 39, 57–58. 32. AQIM, “Report,” 4. 33. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 6. 34. AQIM, “Report,” 3. 35. Ibid. 36. Hisham, “Dear Brother,” 10–11. 37. “Al-Nayjiri” hereafter refers to “the Nigerian.” 38. Saleh, “In the Name of Allah,” 7. 39. Shekau, “Praise to God,” 1–2. 40. Zeid, letter to Abu Musab, 1. 41. Lahoud, “Letters from Abbottabad,” 22–23. 42. Ibid., 40–42; al-Shabaab, “Labbaik ya Osama.” 43. Al-Zawahiri, “Announcing.” 44. Anonymous, letter to Abu Musab. 45. Lahoud, “Beware of Imitators,” 62, 74. 46. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 6. 47. Bin Laden, “Letter,” 32; see also Lahoud, “Letters from Abbottabad,” footnote 28. 48. Droukdel, “Condition of Mujahidin”; Zeid, “AQIM Response.” 49. Lahoud, “Letters from Abbottabad,” 18–19. 50. Droukdel, “Genocide Against Muslims.” 51. al-Sayyaf, “Wounds of Our Brothers.” 52. AQIM, “Join the Caravan,” part 2, 5:49. 53. Ibid.,” part 2, 0:00–4:00; part 1, 17:58. 54. Maaly, “Al-Qaeda and Its Allies;” AP, “Al-Qaida Papers: A Disciplinary Letter,” 15. For Yahya Djouadi images, see GSPC, “Apostates’ Hell,” 15:00–20:00. 55. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 8. 56. Ibid. 57. AP, “Al-Qaida Papers: A Disciplinary Letter,” 6–7.

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58. Ibid, 20. 59. A. U. Yusuf, “Message.” 60. AQIM, “Raid,” 1:00–3:00. 61. Al Jazeera, “Nigeria Forces.” 62. Zein, “Why Does Al-Jazeera,” 4; Abdullah and Elareshi, “Building Narratives.” 63. Real name: Omar Shafik Hammam. 64. Al-Shabaab, “Festival,” 1:04. 65. Al-Shabaab, “Year of Unity,” 15:40. 66. AQIM, “Fighting Is Prescribed,” part 2, 43:15–44:30. 67. Real name: Mohamed Lemine al-Hacene al-Hadrami. For his biography, see Uthman, “Abdullah al-Shinqiti.” 68. AQIM, “Fighting Is Prescribed,” part 1, 46:40; part 1, 20:00–33:00; part 2, 33:10; part 2, 47:55. For another Abdullah al-Shinqiti image, see AQIM, “Assault Them at the Gate,” 35:20–38:20. 69. AQIM, “Fighting Is Prescribed,” part 1, 36:38; AQIM, “Claiming the French Embassy.” 70. Al-Mashhadani, “Statement.” 71. ISI, “Knights of Martyrdom.” 72. Ibid. 73. Imran, “New Bosnia.” 74. AQAP, “Misery of Muslims,” 52; Billah, “Nigeria,” 65. 75. Al-Libi, “Algeria.” 76. Al-Janih, “Comment.” 77. Al-Fallujah Islamic Forum, “Genocide of Muslims,” 11–15. 78. Ibid., 26. 79. Ibid., 68–69; Al-Awlaki, “Boko Haram,” post #47. 80. Al-Fallujah Islamic Forum, “Genocide of Muslims,” 68–69. 81. Ibid. 82. BBC, “Ghana Text Hoax.” 83. Al-Fallujah Islamic Forum, “Genocide of Muslims,” 71. 84. Ibid., 69. 85. Lum, “Again on Mauritania.” 86. BBC, “Spanish Hostage”; Agence France-Presse, “Kidnapper of Spanish Hostages.” 87. Anonymous journalist interviewing Abubakar Kambar interview. 88. Neila, “How I Negotiated”; Maaly, “Al-Qaeda and Its Allies.” 89. Al-Maqdisi, “Response.” 90. Al-Jazairi, “To Our People.” 91. Al-Fallujah Islamic Forum, “Al-Qaeda in West Africa,” 12–17. 92. Gusau and Dauda, “Borno Shivers”; CBSNews.com, “Osama.” 93. Gusau and Dauda, “Borno Shivers.” 94. Agence France-Presse, “Islamist Leader Shekau.” 95. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 216–219; Shekau, “Declaring War.” 96. Shekau, “Declaring War.” 97. Shekau, “Risalat Taaziyyah”; Katz and Foster, “Boko Haram Representative.” 98. Shekau, “Risalat Taaziyyah.” 99. Shekau’s greeting was erroneously addressed to “Aweys Abu Mansur.” Abu Mansur was Mukhtar Robow’s alias while Shaikh Hassan Dahir Aweys was another al-Shabaab commander who allied with Robow in an internal power struggle with Ahmed Godane that Godane eventually won in 2013. 100. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 221–224; Al-Tunisi, “Comment.” 101. Shekau, “Message from Shekau.” 102. BH, “We’re Not Boko Haram.” 103. Ibid. 104. Bunza, “Iranian Model,” 238–239. 105. A. Abubakar, “Islamist Sect.” 106. US Embassy Ouagadougou, “MOD Discusses”; AQIM, “Abubakar al-Shinqiti.” 107. US Embassy Paris, “France’s Current Thinking.”

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108. Al Jazeera, “Did Al-Qaeda Ally.” 109. Nigerian Voice, “Boko Haram Planned.” 110. Agence France-Presse, “Islamist Leader Shekau.” 111. Ahmed Mohammed, “From Magrib Prayer.” 112. Garba, “How Attackers Outwitted.” 113. Anonymous FBI investigator discussion. 114. Ahmed Mohammed, “From Magrib Prayer.” 115. Ibid.; Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 225–226. 116. Sahara Reporters, “Boko Haram Organizes”; Mshelizza, “Suspected Nigeria Sect Gunmen.” 117. Shekau, “Eid al-Fitr Message”; Yusuf, Hadhihi, 57. 118. Shekau, “Eid al-Fitr Message.” 119. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 4; AQIM, “Spoils of Mujahideen.” 120. Alias: Yahya Abu Hammam. For his biography, see Maaly, “Interview.” 121. Maaly, “Interview.” 122. Boisbouvier, “Mali”; AQIM, “Sharia Advice.” 123. Aisha interview, 2019. 124. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 8. 125. Ibid., 13. 126. Premium Times, “Judge’s Absence”; Pérouse de Montclos, “Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria,” 892; Africa Confidential, “Gadaffi’s Bequest.” 127. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 10–11. 128. For Abdullah Abu al-Hassan al-Shinqiti images, see AQIM, “Participate,” 6:05. 129. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 10. 130. Ibid. 131. Brigaglia and Iocchi, “Some Advice,” 32.

8 Factional Feuds and Territorial Conquests

AQIM’s terminating trainings for Boko Haram might not have affected attacks that Shekau’s loyalists in Maiduguri launched after the September 7, 2010, Bauchi prison break, including assassinating police officers and Islamic scholars and burning government buildings. Unlike the prison break, these attacks did not require sophisticated or specialized training that experienced AQIM members could provide, such as for suicide bombings, international kidnapping operations, or ambushes. Nevertheless, considering there were no reports about training camps in Nigeria from July 2009 to September 2010, some fighters must have trained outside Nigeria at AQIM’s camps in the Sahel or in northern Cameroon, Sudan, or Somalia. Boko Haram’s Maiduguri membership included thousands of Yusuf’s followers who survived the July 2009 crackdown and vengeful relatives of deceased members. With northern Nigerian families averaging seven children, several thousand relatives were inevitably grieving. This provided Boko Haram with local support networks committed to relaunching the jihad and hiding fighters and weapons from security forces. Moreover, when the group’s fighters married deceased members’ widows or daughters, it meant the group could raise new generations of jihadists who despised Nigeria and did not know anything but war with Nigeria from birth.1 Abu Musab recalled the most extreme members lived in Maiduguri’s outskirts and called their neighborhoods Fallujah to honor al-Qaeda’s Iraqi stronghold where four US contractors were hanged in 2004.2 They also declared takfir on other group members, and anyone who entered their neighborhoods needed tazkiya (vouching). Hence, they became Shekau’s ardent loyalists and primary base of support in Maiduguri.3 However, group members who trained with AQIM and al-Shabaab were responsible for attacks

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from Christmas Eve 2010 onward that exhibited higher levels of sophistication than attacks in Maiduguri. Those sophisticated attacks, which mostly occurred around Abuja, Kaduna, and Plateau, shocked Nigerians and foreign observers, who anticipated Boko Haram would not become anything more than a short-term nuisance. However, the group proved them wrong. Signs of AQIM Tactics and Targeting Within three months of the September 2010 Bauchi prison break, Boko Haram killed around fifteen Islamic scholars, politicians, and traditional leaders in Maiduguri.4 Several civilians were also killed collaterally. There were also reports that security officers responded to attacks by arresting numerous suspects for “further investigation.” However, there was no judicial process for swiftly trying cases, causing suspects and relatives to complain that police were delaying or “doctoring charges.”5 Moreover, even when civilians supported security officials, Boko Haram could deter them. In October 2010, leaflets posted in Shekau’s name, for example, warned Maiduguri’s Muslims against hindering “the establishment of sharia” by assisting police or soldiers.6 On Christmas Eve (December 24, 2010), small-scale attack patterns were interrupted by seven bombs detonating simultaneously in Christian areas in Jos, Plateau State, killing thirty-two people, and two bombs detonating at Maiduguri churches, killing six people.7 The symbolism of targeting Christians on Christmas Eve and the technique of simultaneous bombings not only maximized Christians’ psychological trauma but also demonstrated greater sophistication and coordination than in previous Boko Haram operations. These Christmas Eve bombings also followed Droukdel’s advice to target churches, Westerners, or government officials. If reports were correct that Boko Haram members who later joined Ansaru were behind the Christmas Eve bombings, then AQIM-trained members probably were involved and coordinating locally with Muslims in Jos to select Christian areas to target and place the bombs.8 Recruiting Muslims in Jos would have been facilitated by Muslim-Christian violence plaguing the city, including the January 2010 clashes that resulted in several hundred deaths, and conformed to AQIM’s playbook, which called for “deliberately integrating into a region by . . . fighting in support of local grievances.” 9 The Christmas Eve bombings were not necessarily ordered by AQIM, however, because Boko Haram was not intended to become an AQIM brigade, and by December 2010 the AQIM–Boko Haram alliance had soured. Nevertheless, AQIM empowered Boko Haram members who received AQIM’s training and advising to launch attacks independently. External AQIM influence on these Christmas Eve bombings also suggests why they deviated from the usual “cycle of violence”

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in Jos where Muslims and Christians retaliated in skirmishes but avoided mass casualty, asymmetric bombings. Consequently, the FBI conclusively found the Christmas Eve bombings bore “the hallmarks of al-Qaeda,” and US president Barack Obama approved Nigeria’s request to station FBI counterterrorism teams in Nigeria.10 The Christmas Eve bombings also demonstrated that cells in Maiduguri and Jos coordinated and were under Shekau’s overall leadership despite increasing friction between Boko Haram’s AQIM trainees and Shekau. Not only did bombs detonate in Shekau’s Maiduguri stronghold and Jos, but they were also claimed by Boko Haram in an online post on a website whose name, mansoorah, was the same name as the Brigades of Tawhid in Nigeria’s website featured on Anwar al-Awlaki’s blog after Yusuf’s death.11 The online post linked to a Shekau video, where he stated, “Jos is testimony to brutal killings of our Muslim brothers and abductions of our women and children. . . . This is war between Muslims and infidels.”12 Before that website was shut down, its owner’s e-mail address was traced to a subsequently closed Facebook page that indicated the page’s host graduated from Bauchi’s Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, whose students reportedly supported Boko Haram when the July 2009 clashes began.13 The host’s thirty-three Facebook “friends” also included Cardiff Muslim Primary School, whose special needs teacher, Sadia Malik, and her husband, Wales’ Supporters of Tawheed leader Abu Hajar, were arrested for spreading jihadist videos about “War Strategies” in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria and encouraging Cardiff boys’ travel to Somalia and Syria, respectively.14 Another “friend” of the host used Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s face as his profile photo and wrote posts supporting Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.15 The Facebook host’s profile, whose photo showed him wearing a veil, therefore, revealed a Western-educated individual who, like Abu Khubab al-Nayjiri, used Facebook in 2010 when only 1 percent of Nigerians used it (compared to 20 percent by 2020).16 However, Facebook was becoming increasingly popular, if not also controversial nationally, especially after Kaduna’s sharia court unsuccessfully attempted to prohibit human rights organizations from discussing sharia amputations on Facebook or Twitter.17 The host’s profile further demonstrated he may have posted on Anwar al-Awlaki’s blog after Yusuf’s death and that sophisticated and well-educated Boko Haram members were part of the group despite less-educated youths on Maiduguri’s outskirts becoming Shekau’s most ardent loyalists. The Christmas Eve bombings presaged Boko Haram’s next major bombing in Abuja, central Nigeria,18 conducted by AQIM-trained members on another symbolic holiday Boko Haram viewed as “un-Islamic”: New Year’s Eve (December 31, 2010). Although this bombing was unclaimed, journalists, the FBI, and British officials attributed it to an al-Qaeda-funded

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and AQIM-trained cell led by Abubakar Kambar, whose members, like the Christmas Eve bombing masterminds, later joined Ansaru.19 Moreover, the target was a bar near military barracks where Muslims were unlikely customers, and eleven soldiers were killed. Similar to Christmas Eve, this bombing also attracted international media attention because it occurred on New Year’s Eve and in Nigeria’s capital while conforming to Droukdel’s advice to target government officials, including soldiers.20 In contrast to the sophisticated Jos and Abuja bombings in central Nigeria, in early 2011 Boko Haram members in Maiduguri continued late2010 attack patterns. In March 2011, for example, the group assassinated another Islamic scholar, Shaikh Ibrahim Gomari, who preached in Maiduguri and condemned the group’s violence.21 After that assassination, the group called Yusuf’s former follower, Muhammed Auwal Nuhu, and threatened to kill him. This forced Nuhu’s relocation to Saudi Arabia to continue studying with help from Nigerian Salafis who had Saudi contacts. Nuhu later joined Salafi scholars like Ibrahim Jalo Jalingo in writing treatises countering “Boko Haram’s creed.”22 Also in March 2011, Boko Haram misfired and killed the local chairman of Ali Modu Sheriff’s political party while attempting to assassinate Sheriff’s adviser.23 Two months earlier, Boko Haram assassinated Sheriff’s cousin, who was a gubernatorial candidate. Also killed was Sheriff’s younger brother and two police officers. After these Maiduguri assassinations Boko Haram posted leaflets reiterating the group was waging jihad and “urging people not to sit near security agents or politicians.”24 Using leaflets also demonstrated that Boko Haram appealed not only to educated elites and international audiences through videos, online statements, and text messages, but also to local civilians who could spread the leaflets’ warnings by word of mouth. The assassinations also proved Boko Haram could track Maiduguri officials for revenge attacks because fighters knew the city inside out. While the jihad’s locus was Maiduguri, the Jos and Abuja bombings indicated sophisticated cells were still operating in central Nigeria, where the group would launch its first suicide bombings. Nigeria’s First Suicide Bombings In March 2011, Boko Haram members who had trained in Sudan returned to Nigeria and began preparing the group’s first suicide bombings, where targets became primarily churches, Westerners, and government buildings in central Nigeria, but not Islamic scholars like in Maiduguri. Only targeting in central Nigeria, including the Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve bombings in 2010, reflected Droukdel’s advice. Moreover, only tactics in central Nigeria regularly included suicide car bombings accompanied by “martyrdom videos” and later kidnappings of Western engineers, which resembled AQIM

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tactics. This indicated AQIM’s Boko Haram trainees operated among Christian and Hausa populations in central Nigeria while Shekau loyalists concentrated in primarily Kanuri populations around Maiduguri. Boko Haram also telegraphed suicide bombings not only with Yusuf’s and Nur’s justifying them in pre–July 2009 sermons, but also in the group’s 2010 video nasheed integrating Nigerian and international themes, including al-Qaeda leaders’ images, and a warning: “We’ll carry out martyrdom operations. . . . We’ll share them with your barracks, churches, Christians and taghut in Nigeria.”25 Considering targets mentioned in this nasheed, including also CAN and ThisDay, were subsequently struck by suicide bombings and nasheeds were an aesthetic of al-Qaeda’s “jihadi culture,” this nasheed’s creators probably were AQIM-trained Nigerians using Hausa style to appeal locally per AQIM’s playbook.26 Boko Haram’s first suicide car bombing was forewarned in a June 15, 2011, statement sent to Maiduguri journalists that claimed, “Very soon, we will wage jihad. . . . Our jihadists arrived in Nigeria from Somalia where they received real training on warfare.”27 The next day, on June 16, Boko Haram photographed a thirty-five-year-old married man with five children, who was a former Yusuf follower, in his car smiling with rifle in hand. He had previously acquired arms for the group, had businesses in Benin and Dubai, and volunteered for this operation. He followed the car of the inspector-general of police, entered Federal Police headquarters premises in Abuja, and detonated explosives in his car. He killed himself and three others but missed the inspector-general, who later sought asylum in Britain after his deputy’s assassination.28 Boko Haram member Abu Fatima stated immediately after the operation that “we attacked [the inspector-general’s] base to show him actions speak louder than words.”29 This reflected how Boko Haram pursued jihad that Izala scholars, who were “all talk and no action,” abandoned. Another Boko Haram spokesman told Ahmed Salkida that Boko Haram used “a readymade bomb acquired from abroad,” which presumably meant from AQIM, and the group had similar bombs for future use.30 This first suicide car bombing, like the Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve bombings in 2010, indicated the masterminds were probably trained by AQIM or al-Shabaab. The June 15 warning about jihadists’ arriving from Somalia was no bluff because three months earlier Boko Haram members returned to Nigeria with the Sudanese military trainer who was close to al-Shabaab’s Ahmed Godane.31 The operation’s sophistication and target were also consistent with what would be expected from AQIM and al-Shabaab training, and Droukdel’s targeting advice. However, the suicide bomber was from Maiduguri and likely selected by Shekau. This implied coordination between Shekau and AQIM- or al-Shabaab-trained members, like the Christmas Eve bombings in 2010, despite concerns about Shekau’s extremism.

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The second suicide car bombing, on August 26, 2011, involved striking Abuja’s UN building and killed twenty-three people. Afterward, Boko Haram sent a video to Agence France-Presse featuring Shekau and then another scene of the suicide bomber, a twenty-seven-year-old married Maiduguri mechanic, holding a rifle, smiling, hugging comembers, and declaring his attack a warning to “Obama and other infidels.”32 In another video segment released by Agence France-Presse, Shekau’s voice was heard condemning the UN and praising Bin Laden, who died three months earlier.33 Boko Haram again conducted a major suicide car bombing, but also internalized al-Qaeda’s jihadi culture with the martyrdom video, which resembled al-Shabaab videos of its first suicide bombers dedicating operations to Bin Laden in 2007.34 US AFRICOM head General Carter Ham subsequently asserted that Boko Haram desired to “collaborate closely” with AQIM and al-Shabaab.35 Nigerian authorities claimed Mamman Nur masterminded the UN bombing after returning from Somalia.36 This was apparently based on evidence acquired from interrogating two Boko Haram members who were arrested while planning an unspecified operation in Abuja five days before the UN bombing. One of the arrestees was among Abubakar Kambar’s Kano-based recruits in 2006 and released into deradicalization programs at that time.37 If the arrestee’s plan was to target the UN, then it would seem Kambar was also involved in the UN bombing, which was eight months after he masterminded the 2010 New Year’s Eve bombing in Abuja. According to Nigerian analyst Fulan Nasrullah—who claimed to have met Khalid al-Barnawi and to have studied and prayed with Mauritanian jihadist scholars, including Abu Muhammed al-Maqdisi’s website’s sharia committee head, Abu Mundhir al-Shinqiti, and Bin Laden’s highest-ranking shura council member to have opposed the 9/11 attacks, Abu Hafs alMauritani—the UN bombing mastermind was al-Barnawi but Nur provided “technical expertise.”38 Al-Barnawi reportedly paid Shekau some of the €200,000 Droukdel ordered Abu Zeid to provide to Boko Haram for Shekau’s facilitating attack logistics, including providing the suicide bomber.39 However, one mediator between Nigerian authorities and Boko Haram during the Chibok kidnapping, Maiduguri-based lawyer Zanna Mustapha, claimed the UN bombing mastermind was actually al-Barnawi’s deputy, Babagana Assalafi.40 The United States, meanwhile, implied Nur funded the operation when it designated him as a terrorist.41 The UN building may have been a “compromise target” between networks of regionally trained Nigerians, including al-Barnawi, Kambar, and Nur; Shekau locally; and Yunus al-Mauritani internationally. Al-Mauritani, who Bin Laden requested to oversee Africa operations, reportedly approved the dispensing of the €200,000 from AQIM to Khalid al-Barnawi through Abu Zeid and would have considered the UN suitable for al-Qaeda

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external operations because AQIM’s and ISI’s predecessors bombed the Algiers and Baghdad UN offices in 2003 and 2007.42 Al-Mauritani might, therefore, have also informed Bin Laden about Droukdel’s expendable €200,000, which is why Bin Laden advised Attiya to “suggest” Droukdel provide those funds to al-Mauritani after July 4, 2010. Although Droukdel still provided the €200,000 to Boko Haram, he did not necessarily leave alMauritani uninformed, especially if al-Mauritani was notified about the Abuja UN bombing. Like the 2010 Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve bombings, these June and August 2011 suicide car bombings at Abuja’s Federal Police headquarters and UN building reflected Droukdel’s advice to target government officials and Westerners. These two high-profile and internationally reported attacks may also have convinced Abu Yahya al-Libi to recognize that AQIM’s “shade . . . reached the land of Muslim Nigeria” in his September 2011 video just like he recognized al-Shabaab by publicly supporting the group when it announced its formation and began launching operations in 2006.43 Al-Qaeda now also claimed its stake on jihad in Nigeria. Expanding Suicide Car Bombings After the June and August 2011 suicide car bombings in Abuja, Boko Haram launched five more suicide car bombings in 2011 and twenty-one suicide car bombings in 2012. These were in addition to more than ten nonsuicide car bombings, person-borne suicide bombings, and planted bombings from December 2010 until the end of 2012 (such as the Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve bombings in December 2010). Altogether, therefore, there were approximately twenty-eight total suicide car bombings from June 2011 until the end of 2012 in addition to other bombings.44 Before June 2011, in contrast, there were no suicide bombings in Nigerian history. This indicated Boko Haram must have launched this suicide bombing campaign even though few masterminds or suicide bombers, who obviously died, were arrested and confessed. Moreover, twelve of the twenty-one suicide car bombings in 2012 struck churches during Sunday services, and six of the other nine suicide car bombings struck government buildings, two struck telecommunications towers, and one struck the media agency ThisDay. Twenty-one of the twenty-eight suicide car bombings from June 2011 until the end of 2012 were also in central Nigeria, especially around Abuja, Kaduna, and Jos. From the September 2010 Bauchi prison break until the end of 2011, Boko Haram launched around ninety attacks in Borno (almost all in Maiduguri) and only forty attacks in the rest of Nigeria. Even though in 2012 Boko Haram launched around 200 attacks in Borno (with around 160 in Maiduguri) compared to a greater proportion of around 250 attacks in the

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rest of Nigeria (with around 100 in Yobe and Adamawa combined), the group’s most sophisticated attacks—suicide car bombings—were still disproportionately in central Nigeria and on targets Droukdel advised, including churches and government buildings. In contrast, less sophisticated attacks on targets Shekau preferred, including Islamic scholars and traditional rulers, politicians, and rank-and-file policemen, were concentrated in Borno, especially Maiduguri, in 2011 and 2012.45 One hypothesis to explain differences between tactics and targeting in central Nigeria and Borno, or northeastern Nigeria generally (Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa), is that when several dozens, if not hundreds, of AQIM- and al-Shabaab-trained Boko Haram members returned to Nigeria, they followed AQIM’s advice. This involved recruiting aggrieved central Nigerian Muslims per AQIM’s playbook and launching sophisticated attacks, especially suicide car bombings, in areas where Christians, Westerners, and major government buildings were located in central Nigeria. In addition, these AQIM- and al-Shabaab-trained members avoided Shekau’s northeastern Nigerian strongholds, especially Maiduguri, because they disagreed with his loyalists’ extremism. The suicide car bombings in central Nigeria from June 2011 until the end of 2012, therefore, reflected operational outcomes of Boko Haram members’ AQIM and al-Shabaab training. Such was acknowledged by Abu Musab even after becoming ISWAP leader, and thus al-Qaeda’s rival. In his 2018 book he wrote that Boko Haram “benefitted from [AQIM’s] experience and guidance” and had “strong ties” to AQIM, and that AQIM’s “wealth of skills and expertise” assisted Boko Haram’s “martyrdom operations” on “churches of Christians at war.”46 If these suicide car bombings and other concurrent bombings were not related to Boko Haram members’ training with AQIM or al-Shabaab, then one must make two assumptions. First, “waves” of Boko Haram members who trained with AQIM or al-Shabaab after July 2009 and other Nigerian jihadists who trained with AQIM before 2009, including Khalid al-Barnawi, Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi, and Abubakar Kambar, had virtually no impact on the violence in Nigeria starting with the September 2010 Bauchi prison break. Second, Boko Haram members who remained in Nigeria learned to make suicide car bombs independently. However, neither of these two assumptions is likely. Typically suicide bombing expertise has spread globally when less experienced militants (Boko Haram) learn from more experienced militants (AQIM and al-Shabaab).47 Additionally, Boko Haram’s rapidly obtaining suicide bombing expertise without external support would be unlikely considering its weak bomb-making capabilities during the July 2009 clashes. Moreover, Boko Haram probably would not have coincidentally followed Droukdel’s advice and primarily targeted churches with special operations, such as suicide car bombings, if not for actual AQIM advising and training.

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AQIM began launching suicide bombings in 2007 after affiliating with al-Qaeda.48 At that time, AQIM benefited from tactical transfer from Algerians who were returning home from Iraq and ideological approval for suicide bombings from Abu Yahya al-Libi, who defended AQIM against Saudi scholars’ treatises opposing suicide bombings.49 Likewise, Boko Haram began launching suicide bombings and other major bombings after allying with al-Qaeda affiliates. Boko Haram benefited from expertise from Nigerians who trained abroad with AQIM and al-Shabaab, returned home, and launched attacks resembling al-Qaeda’s. Nevertheless, AQIM eventually reduced, and nearly ceased, conducting suicide bombings by 2011 because it led to excessive civilian casualties; AQIM instead focused on ambushes and kidnappings of Westerners.50 This was similar to ISWAP after Abu Musab became leader in August 2016, which also virtually ceased suicide bombings, except on military targets during battles. One of Boko Haram’s exemplary al-Qaeda-style suicide car bombings targeted ThisDay’s Abuja office on April 26, 2012, killing eleven people, and occurred simultaneously with a failed suicide car bombing at ThisDay’s Kaduna office. Boko Haram’s main spokesman, known to journalists as Abu Qaqa II because he replaced Shekau’s original spokesman, Abu Qaqa, claimed Nigerian media agencies “took the government’s side,” but he singled out ThisDay for publishing Isioma Daniel’s 2002 article.51 Targeting ThisDay, therefore, fulfilled Muhammed Yusuf’s 2008 sermon in which he claimed that his followers’ “revolt” was a “reaction” to Muslims who did not punish Isioma Daniel in 2002 and instead only “burn[ed] newspapers.”52 In fact, when the Kaduna ThisDay bomber was captured after his failed detonation, he reportedly stated he was formerly Shaikh Jaafar’s student and since 2002 sought revenge on ThisDay for Isioma Daniel’s article.53 However, only Boko Haram, and not Shaikh Jaafar’s Izala heirs, allowed him to fulfill this objective. Boko Haram also released video footage of the explosion at ThisDay’s Abuja office with Hausa-style nasheeds playing, indicating group members filmed the attack from afar and recognized its propaganda value.54 Three weeks before the ThisDay suicide car bombings, another massive car bomb detonated prematurely at a Kaduna church’s perimeter on Easter, killing around forty mostly Muslim motorcycle drivers and tea sellers.55 The target and timing were nevertheless consistent with Droukdel’s advice and the 2010 Jos Christmas Eve and Abuja New Year’s Eve bombings conducted by AQIM-trained Nigerians. However, the non-claim of this Easter bombing and Shekau’s subsequent April 12, 2012, YouTube video monologue several days later claiming Boko Haram’s “purpose is not killing” indicated Boko Haram’s realization that killing Muslim civilians harmed the group’s reputation.56 Contrarily, a previous Christmas Day 2011 church bombing in Madalla, an Abuja suburb, that killed thirty Christians was claimed by Abu

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Qaqa as retaliation for the “government and international community maintaining sealed lips” about the September 2011 Muslim-Christian clashes in Jos in which several Muslims died during Eid al-Fitr.57 Nigerian authorities blamed the Madalla church bombing on Yusuf’s former Sokoto-based shura member, Kabiru Sokoto, although they lacked evidence. They had been tracking him since they identified a Kano house where Shekau relocated in December 2011. After gunfights with Boko Haram members who noticed security forces near Shekau’s house, Shekau escaped to another Kano house but not before a deputy, Suleiman Gambo, was arrested. 58 Gambo revealed under interrogation that Kabiru Sokoto was the group’s spiritual adviser and that he preached at an Abuja mosque near Kogi State’s border.59 Kabiru Sokoto was subsequently arrested in the Borno Governor’s Lodge in Abuja in January 2012 suspiciously buying a car from a military officer.60 The security forces then declared him the Madalla church bombing mastermind so President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration could “prove progress against the sect was being made.”61 After Kabiru Sokoto’s followers in Abuja helped him escape from a police car, he was rearrested weeks later near Cameroon’s border. He confessed that he opposed Shekau because Shekau provided him no money, and he knew the actual Madalla church bombing masterminds, including one from Kafanchan, but he denied his own involvement.62 Security forces reportedly tracked Kabiru Sokoto to rearrest him in February 2012 by monitoring his phone calls to Abu Qaqa, who was arrested in Kaduna days earlier. Abu Qaqa, an ethnic Ebira from Kogi who joined Boko Haram during his university studies in Maiduguri and was freed during the Bauchi prison break, revealed under interrogation that Shekau’s brutality, including killing members who wanted to surrender, and Shekau’s Kanuri favoritism frustrated non-Kanuri Boko Haram commanders.63 Boko Haram, however, allegedly assassinated Abu Qaqa’s father, reportedly a retired Maiduguri prison officer, on the same day it assassinated two other Maiduguri prison officers at a mosque to “send a message” to Abu Qaqa “to keep quiet.”64 This also reflected how Boko Haram kept tabs on imprisoned members to ensure they did not become informants or compromise the security of group members on the outside. Suleiman Gambo also stated under interrogation the €200,000 AQIM provided Boko Haram caused friction because Khalid al-Barnawi never allowed Shekau to control its spending.65 Kabiru Sokoto further identified Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi, who partook in the mid-August 2009 meetings with Khalid al-Barnawi and Abu Zeid, as an alternate group leader, which suggests why there was residual AQIM influence on suicide car bombings in central Nigeria, where al-Bauchi was based, despite AQIM’s ceasing trainings for Boko Haram members and Boko Haram–AQIM relations sour-

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ing because of Shekau’s extremism by 2011.66 AQIM-trained members like al-Bauchi likely continued observing Droukdel’s targeting advice in 2011 and after separating from Shekau to form Ansaru in January 2012. Some unclaimed suicide bombings in 2012 attributed to Boko Haram were likely launched, but still not claimed, by Ansaru, as discussed subsequently. Additionally, if only €200,000 was sufficient to create friction, Boko Haram must have been cash-strapped. AQIM’s financial provision must, therefore, have been significant for relaunching the jihad. Nevertheless, financial, ideological, and personal clashes between Shekau, AQIM-trained members including al-Barnawi and al-Bauchi, and other members disaffected by Shekau, including Abu Qaqa and Kabiru Sokoto, were causing Boko Haram’s factionalization. Leadership Command and Control and War on Christians Abubakar Shekau’s December 2011 escape from capture in Kano occurred weeks after he fled Damatru, Yobe, when security forces approached his hideout. A Shekau deputy, Abu Saad al-Bamawi (“from Bama”), implemented diversion plans in Damatru by ordering attacks on government buildings that killed sixty people, including dozens in tandem suicide car bombings at a court prosecuting Boko Haram members.67 This enabled Shekau’s escape and relocation to Kano by January 2012. Shekau’s movement from Maiduguri to Damatru and Kano reflected his strategy to expand the group’s operational reach. As early as August 2011, Boko Haram spokesmen began sending letters to journalists— addressed to Kano leaders, including Kano’s governor and emir—threatening to attack Kano.68 Boko Haram finally struck Kano five months later on January 20, 2012, with attacks on government buildings that killed nearly 200 people, including numerous civilians. Shekau claimed in a January 26, 2012, YouTube video monologue that the Kano raid was retaliation for the arrests of Boko Haram members’ wives and children and that the indiscriminate fire from soldiers caused the civilian casualties, indicating his sensitivity to the death toll.69 Sokoto was also struck with two suicide bombings in July 2012, around five months after the Kano raid and after Boko Haram spokesmen’s warnings of impending attacks from January 20 onward to Sokoto leaders, including the sultan, via threat letters sent to journalists.70 The same approximately half-year time interval was, therefore, apparently needed for Boko Haram to coordinate its messaging, attacks, and expansion to both Kano and Sokoto. The Damatru, Kano, and Sokoto attacks demonstrated that Boko Haram’s violence was less randomized and “decentralized” than often portrayed, and that Shekau was not a “spokesman” for propaganda videos but the power-holding leader in an increasingly sophisticated group hierarchy.71

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The group’s command-and-control nucleus followed Shekau, evidenced by security cordons that protected him from capture in Damatru and Kano. Additionally, neither Yobe nor Kano was attacked from July 2009 until Shekau personally arrived in those states in November 2011 and January 2012, and the group’s expansion to Kano and Sokoto were both forewarned by Shekau’s spokesmen. This demonstrated the group’s ability to fulfill threats and coordinate messaging and attacks between Shekau, his spokesmen, and cells spanning northern Nigerian states. Likewise, even though Adamawa and Gombe were not targeted in 2011, three days after Shekau’s spokesman, Abu Qaqa, issued a January 1, 2012, “three-day ultimatum” demanding Christians leave northern Nigeria, Boko Haram conducted the group’s first ever Adamawa and Gombe church attacks, killing seventeen and six worshippers, respectively. 72 When claiming those attacks on January 5, 2012, Abu Qaqa promised to “extend our frontiers . . . to show the State of Emergency will not deter us.” He further justified his ultimatum as a response to a Christian militia around Kafanchan in southern Kaduna called Akhwat Akwop that was “threatening” northerners.73 Akhwat Akwop announced its founding in July 2011 in response to the severe Muslim-Christian violence in southern Kaduna surrounding the April 2011 elections and a pro–Muhammed Yusuf group called Yusuf Islamic Brothers that posted threats online targeting a southern Kaduna Christian woman who mocked Boko Haram on Facebook.74 Akhwat Akwop further alleged Boko Haram sought to undermine both “minority Christian” President Jonathan, who won the 2011 presidential election, and Kaduna’s first ever Christian governor, Patrick Yakowa.75 In September 2011, Akhwat Akwop further warned Hausa-Fulanis against “Islamizing Christians” and promised to match Boko Haram “blood-for-blood,” which Abu Qaqa apparently noticed.76 Yusuf Islamic Brothers also alleged in e-mails to journalists that the Christian Kaduna, Plateau, and Adamawa governors, including Patrick Yakowa, “sponsored” Akhwat Akwop.77 However, Yusuf Islamic Brothers ceased to exist after one faction dropped leaflets in Maiduguri promising an August 2011 Ramadan cease-fire and to avoid harming civilians, which the faction running the group’s blog rejected.78 Nevertheless, some Yusuf Islamic Brothers members may have eventually joined Ansaru because Ansaru adopted similar messaging specifically against Akhwat Akwop, Christians in central Nigeria, and harming civilians. Alternatively, that Akhwat Akwop and Yusuf Islamic Brothers never conducted serious attacks could suggest the SSS used them to sow dissent in Boko Haram. This might explain why the SSS consistently infiltrated and dismantled Ansaru cells but not locally embedded and Borno-rooted Boko Haram cells, especially Shekau’s inner circle.

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Despite having no confrontations with Akhwat Akwop, Boko Haram followed through with twenty and thirty attacks, respectively, in Adamawa and Gombe in 2012, which demonstrated the group’s fulfillment of Abu Qaqa’s threat to “extend our frontiers” and that Shekau, his spokesmen, and cells in various states were coordinating messaging and attacks.79 This coordination was also exemplified by Shekau’s January 26, 2012, video threat to attack Nigerian government schools as retaliation for harassment of almajiri students, Boko Haram’s February–March 2012 series of Maiduguri and Kano school burnings and shootings, and Abu Qaqa II’s subsequent claims of those school attacks.80 Similarly, after Abu Qaqa II threatened attacks on cell phone towers because they reported Boko Haram members’ calls to the SSS, Boko Haram conducted a series of attacks on cell phone towers throughout northern Nigeria.81 Additionally, the January 4, 2012, Adamawa and Gombe church attacks, smaller Damatru and Maiduguri attacks targeting Christians one day later, and fresh memories of the 2011 Christmas Day Madalla church bombing, compounded by Abu Qaqa’s ultimatum, created panic among Igbo Christian merchants, causing some to flee northeastern Nigeria.82 Abu Qaqa’s ultimatum, therefore, actualized JTI’s 1995 anti-Christian agenda that JTI later dropped, mentioned in Chapter 4. Boko Haram similarly pursued objectives that other Islamic groups, including al-Zakzaky’s IMN and Izala, seemingly abandoned by 2012, including demanding an Islamic state and full sharia. Boko Haram thus mobilized and “capture[d] Muslim dissent” that other groups once harbored but shelved when accommodating the state, while also commencing al-Qaeda-style attacks that those groups never employed.83 The State of Emergency that Abu Qaqa mentioned when claiming the Adamawa and Gombe church attacks was declared by President Jonathan after the Christmas Day 2011 Madalla church bombing and resulted in increased powers for authorities to close Borno’s borders, erect checkpoints, and conduct terrorism-related arrests.84 However, measures proved ineffectual, and Boko Haram responded in two ways. First, the group expanded attacks by newly targeting states like Kano, Sokoto, Adamawa, and Gombe in 2012 and shifting from almost exclusively Maiduguri-based attacks in Borno in 2011 to attacking most local government areas in Borno in 2012. This set the stage for the group’s territorial conquests in rural Borno in 2013. Second, the group increased attack tempo, doubling them in Maiduguri from around nearly 90 attacks in 2011 to 180 attacks in 2012 and rising from none in Yobe or Kano before November 2011 and January 2012, respectively, to around 100 in each in 2012.85 While not all attacks attributed to Boko Haram could feasibly be claimed by Shekau or his spokesmen and some unclaimed attacks may have been inspired, but not conducted, by Boko Haram, they still entered

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the public psyche as Boko Haram attacks. Such unclaimed attacks in 2012, for example, involved killing gamblers outside Kano churches, bombing two “pro-Western” Islamic schools in Kano, killing Christians at BUK’s campus church, and attempting to assassinate Abubakar Gumi’s son, Ahmad Gumi, in Kaduna one week after he declared in an August 3, 2012, Ramadan sermon that suicide bombers who kill innocents “will not see God.”86 Ahmad Gumi’s sermon represented a Salafi discourse reversal compared to Aminu Dourawa’s post-9/11 sermon praising suicide bombings, mentioned in Chapter 4, and reflected how Salafis, including Bashir Aliyu Umar, now publicly acknowledged Salafi scholars who “became victims of their emotions” after 9/11 were wrong to have issued fatwas condoning suicide bombings.87 Ahmad Gumi’s sermon was also a response to suicide bombers’ targeting, but not killing, Yobe’s emir of Fika (Potiskum) and Borno’s emir that same day on August 3, 2012, and in June 2012, respectively, as well as the assassination of the Borno emir’s brother in 2011. Gumi was also warned that he was on Boko Haram’s hit list, which proved correct when he was targeted by the assassin who failed to breach the security barriers of his late father’s Sultan Bello mosque.88 Other major unclaimed operations were the February 2013 assassinations of nine polio vaccinators in Kano.89 Boko Haram was nevertheless considered responsible for those assassinations, which demonstrated the attackers were not “all talk and no action” like anti–polio vaccine agitator, Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, one decade earlier. Meanwhile, the gradualistic doubling of attacks from 2011 to 2012 in Maiduguri compared to exponential increases in suicide car bombings mostly in central Nigeria from none ever to twenty-eight in an eighteenmonth period from June 2011 until the end of 2012 indicated that trial-anderror improvement explained attacks in Maiduguri while external support, including AQIM and al-Shabaab training, explained suicide car bombings. The FBI’s discovery of al-Qaeda tactical manuals after the November 2011 Damatru attack and Boko Haram’s strategic use of vehicles to block key intersections during that attack to disrupt security forces’ emergency response nevertheless indicated Boko Haram engaged in “hybrid learning” both independently and from foreign jihadists.90 The FBI similarly observed hybrid learning when investigating December 2011 bombings at a Jos bar where soccer fans watched a Real Madrid versus Barcelona football match. One bomb’s detonation during the match and another’s detonation when rescuers arrived revealed how in a short time since July 2009 Boko Haram adopted tactics associated with experienced militant groups like Hamas and the Taliban.91 Nevertheless, targeting bar patrons in not only Jos but also previously Bauchi and Zaria during Goodluck Jonathan’s May 2011 presidential inauguration and Maiduguri hotels during the April 2011 elections did not reflect Droukdel’s advice.92 Droukdel might have considered these

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attacks damaging reputationally for jihadists because victims were unstrategic compared to churches, Westerners, or government officials, despite their “un-Islamic” behavior. This suggested that Shekau maintained influence among some members in central Nigeria or that AQIM-trained members deviated from AQIM guidance, or both. Due to Boko Haram’s rise, Nigeria ranked after only Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen in total suicide bombings by 2013.93 Thus, Hamza Rabia’s vision of al-Qaeda’s “conveying experience” and establishing “mobile centers in the Sahel” to support Nigerian jihadists contributed to making Nigeria a “land of jihad.” Threat perceptions, however, depended on where one stood. Westerners felt threatened by bombings near Abuja and Boko Haram’s connections to al-Qaeda. Nigerian Christians, meanwhile, believed they were targeted by “Muslim fanatics” or a new “Fulani jihad.”94 However, condemnations of Boko Haram by Izala and Muslim traditional leaders, civil society groups’ peacemaking efforts, and Boko Haram’s disinterest or difficulty in expanding attacks to predominantly Christian southern Nigeria kept reprisals at bay, including from the inactive Akhwat Akwop. Concurrently, ordinary Muslims, especially in northeastern Nigeria, were bearing the brunt of attacks, and suspicious President Jonathan and Christian governors ignored Muslim suffering or conspired with Boko Haram. While Ahmad Gumi’s breaking Ramadan fast with Christians and August 6, 2012, statements in support of Islam’s compatibility with democracy and against forced conversions to Islam—reportedly in response to Shekau’s August 4, 2012, YouTube video monologue demanding President Jonathan convert to Islam—eased Muslim-Christian tensions, Gumi’s insinuations during Ramadan in July–August 2012 that Nigeria’s government “used . . . political Boko Haram” to “occupy” northern Nigeria might have still contributed to conspiracy theories about Boko Haram’s rise.95 Boko Haram betrayed logic for Nigerians who were told that Boko Haram ended with Muhammed Yusuf’s death, that it was being “crushed,” and that it was led by the purportedly dead Shekau, even though Shekau appeared in five YouTube video monologues from January to September 2012 and attacks were spreading throughout northern Nigeria.96 Strategic and Operational Divergence Boko Haram’s expansion from Maiduguri to Kano and as far as Sokoto demonstrated growing geographic reach but exacerbated strategic fault lines between Abubakar Kambar and Shekau. Kambar urged Shekau to keep Kano quiet to alleviate pressure on Kano-based cells that conducted special operations on AQIM-recommended targets.97 The UN bombing, for example, may have been Kano-planned because the car used in the bombing was registered in the Kano district where Kambar’s cell members were

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arrested in 2006.98 However, Shekau desired to attack Western targets and churches less than Kambar and other AQIM-trained members did, ignored Kambar, and still ordered the massive January 20, 2012, Kano raid. Shekau’s approval of killing Islamic scholars and traditional leaders and rank-and-file officials and his tolerance for collateral Muslim civilian deaths, including in Kano in the January 2012 raid, increasingly caused AQIM-trained members to oppose his leadership. Moreover, Khalid alBarnawi, Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi, and Kambar sought to kidnap Western engineers and share ransoms with AQIM like AQIM did throughout the Sahel and Droukdel advised. According to Suleiman Gambo, this was among the purposes of Boko Haram members’ training with AQIM and Droukdel’s €200,000 provision stewarded by al-Barnawi.99 Shekau, however, reportedly opposed those kidnappings because they were unrelated to his revenge agenda and he believed Nigerian officials and Islamic scholars who were not waging jihad were infidels equal to Westerners. Moreover, kidnapping operations meant al-Barnawi would control future ransom money, thus reducing Shekau’s absolute power.100 The first international kidnapping operation occurred in Kebbi in May 2011. Khalid al-Barnawi masterminded and Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi coordinated the capture of two engineers from Britain and Italy working for Italian company B. Stabilini. Three months later, in August, the captors sent Côte d’Ivoire’s Agence France-Presse office a proof-of-life video featuring the hostages and three militants holding guns who referred to themselves as “al-Qaeda in the Land Beyond the Sahel.” The hostages also stated their captors were “al-Qaeda.”101 That the captors operated near Niger’s border, spoke Arabic, and contacted francophone journalists implied they were jihadists with Sahelian experience. Additionally, their wearing Sahelian gowns and veils in the video typified AQIM proof-of-life videos, including of the Spaniards kidnapped by “Nigerians and a Ghanaian” in Nouadhibou, Mauritania, in November 2009 and an Italian and his Burkinabe wife kidnapped in southeastern Mauritania in December 2009, who were all exchanged for ransoms. 102 This suggested AQIM-trained kidnappers conducted the Kebbi operation. By December 2011, the captors moved the hostages to neighboring Sokoto and sent another proof-of-life video to Mauritania-based Agence Nouakchott d’information (ANI), which regularly received AQIM attack claims and statements. The captors’ contact with ANI and the hostages’ families through AQIM’s mediator with governments, Moustapha Limam Chafi, further demonstrated the kidnappers’ AQIM ties and enabled the captors to accept a multimillion-euro ransom deal from the families.103 The families reportedly paid some money, but British intelligence, which located the captors, coordinated a March 12, 2012, rescue operation target-

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ing the Sokoto hideout where the hostages were held before the remainder was paid.104 However, both hostages were killed during the rescue operation, leading to diplomatic controversy between Britain and Italy. Abu Qaqa II subsequently denied Boko Haram’s role in the kidnapping, and the narrator in Boko Haram’s video in which it claimed the ThisDay suicide car bombing weeks later stated ThisDay was among the media agencies that wrongly blamed Boko Haram for killing the hostages, which was another justification for bombing ThisDay.105 The British sought to rescue the hostages after Nigerian security forces raided Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi’s shura headquarters in Zaria, Kaduna State on March 7, 2012. Al-Bauchi died in custody from gunshot wounds but contacted the kidnappers in Sokoto before being captured, leading the British to suspect the hostages would imminently be harmed.106 Intelligence from al-Bauchi’s shura headquarters, however, also provided Nigerian security forces leads to another Kano-based cell that kidnapped a German engineer working for Nigerian company Dantata and Sawoe in January 2012. Although that kidnapping was initially unclaimed, on March 23, 2012, al-Andalus released an AQIM proof-of-life video of the German with two captors behind him stating they were “mujahidin of al-Qaeda.”107 AlAndalus simultaneously released a written statement warning Germany’s government to “learn the recent lesson . . . causing the deaths of the British and Italian hostages.”108 This indicated the Kano kidnapping cell’s rhetorical links to the Sokoto kidnappers besides that Kano cell’s operational links to Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi in Kaduna. The reason AQIM never claimed kidnapping or killing the British and Italian engineers but formally claimed kidnapping the German engineer in Kano was that Abubakar Kambar masterminded the Kano operation with AQIM approval, including from Abu Zeid. In contrast, al-Barnawi and alBauchi never informed AQIM prior to their kidnapping of the British and Italian engineers.109 This might have related to al-Barnawi’s or Belmokhtar’s feuds with Abu Zeid and inexperience coordinating kidnappings with AQIM from Nigeria. In the written statement released by al-Andalus regarding the German hostage, AQIM further demanded Germany release Turkey-born Filiz Gelowicz, who was imprisoned in 2011 in Germany for administering jihadist web forums and fundraising for Pakistan-based jihadists in the IMU’s internationalist offshoot, Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) and the IJUallied German Taliban Mujahidin.110 Al-Qaeda was concurrently conducting messaging campaigns to release imprisoned women, especially Gelowicz because her German husband was imprisoned in Germany for participation in an al-Qaeda cell that was planning to attack US Ramstein Air Base in 2007.111 AQIM plausibly raised the German’s kidnapping to Yunus al-Mauritani and al-Qaeda Central just as AQIM desired in the Fowler kidnapping, 2010

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Germaneau kidnapping, and another 2010 kidnapping of French workers in Niger, who were exchanged in 2013.112 Yunus al-Mauritani also coordinated external operations with jihadists in Hamburg, Germany, in 2010 and could have requested AQIM demand Germany exchange Gelowicz for the German in Kano, consistent with al-Qaeda Central’s messaging and his own cooperation with German jihadists.113 Three days after al-Andalus released the proof-of-life video and written statement, Nigerian security forces reportedly raided a Mauritanian-owned shop in Kano where four kidnapping suspects were arrested and AQIM materials were recovered on computers.114 However, the German hostage was absent. Germany then released Gelowicz early from prison, but the German hostage was not released and was later killed by his captors during a May 30, 2012, rescue operation in Kano.115 Al-Andalus then released an AQIM statement “reminding all European regimes” of their “foolishness” (al-hamaqa) and “Einstein’s definition of stupidity . . . by doing the same strategy while waiting for different results” instead of conducting “serious negotiations.”116 Algerian media also reported two Mauritanian AQIM members were killed in the rescue operation.117 Al-Andalus’s Algerian director and head of AQIM’s political committee, Abu Abdullah Ahmed,118 described the kidnappers in northern Nigeria in a September 2012 online interview as “AQIM units working in West Africa and Nigeria” and noted AQIM “trained many Nigerians in camps” after the “painful events” in July 2009.119 Abu Abdullah Ahmed’s interview responses and the two previous international kidnapping operations in northern Nigeria demonstrated AQIM-trained Nigerians were operating independently from Boko Haram, and that if they were capable of conducting these kidnappings, they could have also masterminded other bombings according to Droukdel’s advice, including targeting churches in Jos on Christmas Eve 2010; the Federal Police headquarters in Abuja in June 2011; and Western foreigners at the UN in August 2011. Like these two kidnappings, those three bombings and other suicide car bombings mostly occurred outside Shekau loyalists’ northeastern Nigerian bases. AQIM-trained members’ degree of independence, however, was intolerable for Shekau. Therefore, when AQIM-trained members began formally separating from Boko Haram, Shekau retaliated. In addition to killing jihadists defying Shekau’s authority, Boko Haram’s retaliation may also have involved leaking information to the SSS to disrupt the kidnapping cells in Sokoto and Kano. Ansaru’s Fraught Founding Although AQIM-trained Nigerians reported concerns about Shekau to AQIM in late 2009 and 2010, not until October 2011 did Khalid al-Barnawi, Abu

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Muhammed al-Bauchi, and Abu Muslim al-Ibrahimi, as “[AQIM] Tariq ibn Ziyad Brigade commander,” “emir of the army,” and “shura member,” write to AQIM regarding separating from Shekau. Also signing their correspondence were members of Boko Haram’s “research and fatwa council” and commanders of combat brigades named after Prophet Muhammad’s companions, whose aliases indicated they were from Kano, Katsina, Okene (Kogi), Maiduguri, and Bauchi.120 This reflected the group’s geographic breadth, which also existed on Muhammed Yusuf’s shura, and its organizational sophistication. Their correspondence was addressed to Abdullah al-Shinqiti. He graduated from Nouakchott’s Advanced Institute for Islamic Studies and Research (ISERI),121 whose founding with Saudi funding coincided with Iran’s Islamic Revolution and produced Salafi scholars, including Shaikh Muhammad al-Hassan Dedew. However, like Dedew and Hamadou Kheiry, Abdullah al-Shinqiti was arrested during Mauritania’s 2003 crackdown on Islamists, leading to closures of ISERI and the Saudi Institute, where the Nigerian coordinator of the 2003 training program in Ummul Qura studied. Abdullah al-Shinqiti, therefore, completed his thesis in prison, and when released, he joined AQIM, replaced Belmokhtar’s Mauritanian courier Joulebib122 as AQIM’s Sahara region spokesman, fought alongside Abu Zeid when Boko Haram trainees arrived in the Sahel, and became AQIM’s al-Furqan brigade leader when Jemal Oukacha replaced Yahya Djouadi as Sahara region emir.123 This explains Abdullah al-Shinqiti’s sermon in AQIM’s 2010 “Join the Caravan” video, also featuring Kheiry and a Nigerian, and his becoming AQIM-trained Nigerian jihadists’ point person. The Nigerian jihadists wrote they “benefited greatly” from Abdullah al-Shinqiti’s previous correspondence, especially his encouragement to follow “the moderate path.”124 This resembled Abu Muslim al-Ibrahimi’s treatise mentioned in Chapter 7 and probably reflected al-Ibrahimi’s theological influence in the correspondence. However, the Nigerian jihadists also lamented that Shekau never “implemented what is right” and noted Abdullah al-Shinqiti already viewed Shekau’s correspondences that “showed extremism and excesses” (al-ghuluw wal-ifrat).125 Shekau had so “shaken the brothers” (zalzalt al-ikhwan) that they asked AQIM to “advise us what we must do in these circumstances.”126 The Nigerian jihadists claimed Shekau cited Salafi scholars, including Ali al-Khudair, to apply chain takfir such that, like Muhammed Ali in 2003, Muhammed Yusuf would become an infidel, an irreconcilable paradox because Boko Haram venerated Yusuf. 127 In another reference to alIbrahimi’s treatise, they wrote Shekau “made fair game the blood and wealth [of the umma]” and compared Shekau to mid-1990s GIA leader Anton Zouabri and others who declared takfir on Bin Laden in the 1990s, which reflected Khalid al-Barnawi’s own GIA experiences and his influence in the

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correspondence.128 Zouabri’s excessive takfir required the GIA to kill anyone who used government courts or smoked cigarettes, or who did not pray, pay zakat to the GIA, or wear veils (for women).129 Further, they described how Shekau killed and denied weapons to fighters who disagreed with him, forced fighters to call him “the greatest imam,” and prevented fighters’ travel to Somalia or Algeria without his permission on punishment of death.130 This reflected Abu Muhammed alBauchi’s influence in the correspondence because Abu Aisha recalled that al-Bauchi requested Shekau’s permission to fight in Algeria or Somalia but Shekau rejected his request and called al-Bauchi “disobedient.” Further, Abu Aisha stated Shekau killed forty commanders but asserted they died in battle and sometimes married their widows, which was why al-Bauchi decided to fight abroad or revolt against Shekau in Nigeria before Shekau killed the entire shura.131 The correspondence also noted that unlike Muhammed Yusuf, whose shura reviewed his sermons, Shekau ignored shura advice despite knowing “nothing about war strategy,” which likely reflected al-Barnawi’s input and combat experience and Shekau’s lack thereof. The result was that the shura “ceased working with Shekau” but had not yet separated from Boko Haram, while other members “retired” from jihad and Muslim civilians gravitated toward scholars who opposed jihad, like those in Izala.132 Abu Musab wrote in his 2018 book that Abu Saad al-Bamawi was the last member of Yusuf’s inner circle remaining with Shekau because al-Bamawi was more field commander than theologian. While al-Bamawi “checked [Shekau’s] obstinancy,” he legitimized Shekau’s leadership and contributed to the “vast majority of mujahidin” siding with Shekau.133 The October 2011 correspondence to Abdullah al-Shinqiti was forwarded to Belmokhtar, archived by Abu Numan, and eventually released by al-Andalus on Telegram in April 2017.134 Coinciding with Ansaru leader Abu Usama al-Ansari’s al-Risalah article condemning Shekau’s excessive takfir and four Hisham Abu Akram accounts about AQIM history condemning IS and the GIA, al-Andalus’s publishing this correspondence reinforced AQIM counternarratives against excessive takfir by jihadists like Shekau, the GIA, and AQIM’s ideological rivals in IS. 135 Also included with alAndalus’s publication of this correspondence were excerpts of 2009–2010 correspondences between Droukdel, Abu Zeid, and Shekau, including some found in Bin Laden’s compound in 2011, as well as a November 2011 treatise by Algerian AQIM sharia committee head Abu al-Hassan Rasheed al-Bulaydi responding to the Nigerian jihadists.136 Additionally, Abu Numan’s interspersed narrations provided context about the correspondences and al-Bulaydi’s treatise. Al-Bulaydi, who was respected enough by al-Qaeda that al-Zawahiri eulogized him after Algeria’s military killed him in 2015, argued it was

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undesirable but acceptable under the circumstances for the Nigerian jihadists to separate from Shekau.137 Concurrently, AQIM’s Algerian supreme judge (khadi), Abderrahmane Abou Ishak Essoufi,138 who had experience mediating feuds between Belmokhtar and AQIM, also wrote to support Shekau’s dissenters.139 Thus, as mentioned in both Abu Usama al-Ansari’s al-Risalah article and Abu Numan’s narration, the Nigerian jihadists consulted with AQIM and “separated from Shekau” and “some formed a new group,” Ansaru.140 However, Abu Numan lamented some Ansaru founders’ being killed by the “hands of Shekau,” including Abu Muslim al-Ibrahimi.141 Ansaru’s Dueling Identities Ansaru publicly announced its founding in a statement sent to Kano journalists days after the January 26, 2012, kidnapping in Kano of the German engineer, which indicated AQIM-trained Nigerians were in Kano when Ansaru was founded, and still not long after the January 20, 2012, Shekauordered Kano raid.142 The Kano raid was the last straw before the AQIMtrained Nigerians separated from Shekau. It is also possible future Ansaru members were involved in planning the Kano raid because the August 2011 threat letters sent to journalists before the Kano raid mentioned the “[Federal Police] headquarters suicide bomb attack”; memorialized Muhammed Yusuf’s death and July 2009 battles in “Bauchi, Wudil, Gombe, Yobe and Maiduguri”; alleged Nigeria’s government served the UN and Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN); and called for reviving Usman dan Fodio’s “lost glory.”143 These reflected operations and themes related to AQIMtrained Nigerians and Ansaru subsequently. Moreover, sending those threat letters to Kano journalists was similar to Ansaru’s own release method of its founding statement several months later in Kano. However, the way Shekau oversaw the January 20, 2012, Kano raid that caused massive civilian casualties must have enraged future Ansaru members. Shekau himself seemingly recognized this and, therefore, released the somewhat apologetic January 26, 2012, video monologue addressing civilian deaths. The timing of Ansaru’s founding and its tactics and narratives resembled the Sahel-based group, Movement for Unity [Tawhid] and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA).144 MUJWA split from AQIM and conducted its first operation in October 2011, when it kidnapped two Spaniards and an Italian near a Sahrawi refugee camp in Tindouf, Algeria, who were released in a MUJWA prisoner exchange in Gao, Mali, less than one year later.145 However, MUJWA did not announce its founding until it released a December 2011 video with Arabic, Hausa, and English speakers, which was several weeks before Ansaru announced its founding. MUJWA claimed in the video that it “inaugurated jihad in West Africa”; represented the “ideological descendants” of Usman dan Fodio and the precolonial Senegambian and

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Malian Fulani jihadist leaders Umar Tell and Cheikhou Amadou; and maintained loyalty to the late Bin Laden and Mullah Umar, but, like Belmokhtar, MUJWA did not mention loyalty to AQIM’s leaders despite acknowledging it shared AQIM’s jihadist objectives.146 MUJWA’s founding commanders included its eventual “minister of justice,” Hamadou Kheiry, who claimed the Tindouf kidnapping while “declaring war on France” in the December 2011 video; its spokesman, Belmokhtar’s father-in-law, Oumar Hamaha; and Belmokhtar’s longtime cotrafficker Sultan Ould Bady. He resented AQIM’s rejecting his forming a Malian Arab brigade resembling AQIM’s Tuareg-led al-Ansar brigade and, through Belmokhtar’s mediation, was granted “autonomy” to found MUJWA with Kheiry.147 In Ansaru’s January 2012 founding statement it called for restoring precolonial Islamic caliphates, especially Usman dan Fodio’s.148 Similar to Dan Fodio, Umar Tell and Cheikhou Amadou were also Sufis, despite MUJWA’s allies in northern Mali notoriously destroying Timbuktu’s Sufi shrines.149 Boko Haram, like MUJWA, also eventually enforced strict sharia punishments, including hand amputations. However, AQIM leader Droukdel, based on AQAP leader Nasir al-Wuhayshi’s advice to him, argued MUJWA imposed sharia too quickly on the religiously uneducated Malian population and alienated Muslims.150 In contrast to MUJWA, however, Shekau never referenced Usman dan Fodio or precolonial West African jihadists in his sermons until 2014, and only after reincorporating Ansaru members into Boko Haram, discussed in Chapter 9. Ansaru’s narratives and kidnapping expertise were, therefore, similar to MUJWA, but Boko Haram shared a similar vision with MUJWA on how sharia should be implemented in an Islamic state. Ansaru propaganda, including its website’s homepage, also featured various photos of Muhammed Yusuf and armed fighters wearing Sahelian gowns and veils like the captors in the first proof-of-life video of the British and Italian engineers kidnapped in Kebbi in May 2011. Ansaru’s logo further featured the Maghreb’s setting sun, resembling Algeria’s national emblem and the GSPC logo. 151 This reflected Ansaru members’ Arab-Sahelian jihadist lineage with fighters like Hamadou Kheiry, Oumar Hamaha, Abdullah al-Shinqiti, and Belmokhtar. Meanwhile, Ansaru’s name, which Abu Aisha confirmed was decided by AQIM and was mentioned in al-Bulaydi’s treatise addressing Nigerian jihadists as “mujahidin in Biladis Sudan [Black Africa],” conveyed broad appeal to “Black Africa.” 152 This contrasted with Boko Haram’s “jihad in a land called Nigeria” that Boko Haram mentioned in statements and Shekau videos. Also similar to Ansaru, MUJWA’s name appealed to “West Africa” and not any specific country. Furthermore, MUJWA’s placing tawhid before jihad in its name emphasized ideology and reflected a trend in which groups using that word order in their names eventually pledged loyalty to

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Abubakar al-Baghdadi, including Kheiry and other MUJWA commanders, as discussed subsequently; Jamaat Tawhid wal-Jihad Fi Filistin [Palestine]’s Sinai-based successor, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (Supporters of [Jerusalem]); Jamaat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad Philippines, whose leaders included two “lions from the Arabian Peninsula”; and even ISIS, whose foremost predecessor, founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Jordan in 1999, was called Jamaat alTawhid wal-Jihad.153 Ansaru’s website also featured audio sermons in Hausa by preachers formerly close to Muhammed Yusuf, including Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe and Abubakar Katsina, and a Kanuri sermon by Abu Nasir, but it was unlikely he was Abu Zeid’s Kano-born and Lagos-based Ansaru trainee of the same name who was commanded by Khalid al-Barnawi, mentioned in Chapter 5.154 Because of AQIM-trained Ansaru members’ need to establish local roots in Nigeria and Gombe’s scholarly credentials, he became Ansaru’s emir and used the alias Abu Usama al-Ansari, which his successor after his 2013 death also adopted and used when writing the January 2017 al-Risalah article. After the July 2009 clashes, but before becoming Ansaru’s emir in 2012, Gombe reportedly either went underground in Nigeria and abstained from jihad or trained in Somalia, although both could have occurred between 2009 and 2012.155 If he trained in Somalia, he would have established his militant credentials among Ansaru’s AQIM trainees and al-Qaeda loyalists, such as Khalid al-Barnawi, who reportedly also ventured from Sudan to fight in Somalia in the mid-1990s.156 Whereas Boko Haram maintained contact with several journalists but primarily confided in Ahmed Salkida because of his “objectivity,” Ansaru initially released messages to Kaduna-based Desert Herald newspaper editor Tukur Mamu, who was from Yobe’s royal family in Fika and was “media consultant,” “friend,” and “family member” of Ahmad Gumi.157 Mamu’s associations with Ansaru members derived from his familiarity with Kanama camp members’ 2003 interactions with Yobe officials.158 He also interviewed Yusuf in 2008 and Shekau from his Maiduguri hideout in 2010, possibly resulting in Shekau’s videos circulating in Maiduguri at that time.159 Besides the Desert Herald’s Kaduna headquarters being near Abu Muhammed alBauchi’s own base before al-Bauchi’s death in March 2012, Mamu was also compatible with Ansaru because he believed Boko Haram’s post–July 2009 “grievances are justifiable” and Nigeria erred by refusing “to address the crisis from its embryonic state.”160 Like Boko Haram and Ansaru, he also opposed Izala’s “unprecedented corruption,” closeness to Nigerian governors, indifference to Fulani conversions to Christianity, and “imitation of Western values,” including eventually Izala leaders’ wearing Western clothing in London to demonstrate that they followed the new Saudi king Muhammed bin Salman’s “moderate Islam.”161 This was despite Mamu’s veneration of Ahmad Gumi, who was criticized by Izala’s Jos faction in the mid-2000s for

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being “too political” by, for example, favoring Izala’s Kaduna faction and supporting or criticizing Nigerian presidential candidates.162 Additionally, similar to claims by Abu Qaqa about Shekau’s favoring Kanuris, Abu Aisha recalled Shekau’s dissenters believed Shekau and his loyalists wanted a “Kanuri caliphate” and not an Islamic one, which was an additional reason why Shekau was originally selected as Yusuf’s successor over Hausa-Fulani Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe.163 Shekau likely had greater trust in fellow Kanuris from Borno and Yobe than in HausaFulanis and other Nigerian ethnic groups.164 This might also explain why some Hausa-Fulanis, including Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi, separated from Shekau to form Ansaru; pro-Fulani partisan Tukur Mamu was sympathetic to Ansaru’s Fulani-oriented messaging; Shekau never mentioned Usman dan Fodio in his frequent videos, at least until 2014; and southern and central Nigerian jihadists, especially Ebiras from Kogi like Abu Qaqa, tended to join Ansaru and resent Shekau’s leadership. One of Gombe’s first actions was sending Tukur Mamu a treatise outlining Ansaru’s manhaj (methodology) to pass to Ahmad Gumi when Gumi returned from his usual residence in Saudi Arabia to Nigeria for Ramadan in July–August 2012, during which time Gumi survived an assassination attempt and discussed matters concerning suicide bombings and Boko Haram publicly. The same treatise was delivered to Gombe’s former mentor, Isa Ali Pantami, and other Salafis and SCSN members. Consistent with advice for Boko Haram from Hamza Rabia and Droukdel, and even mentioned in Pantami’s sermon after 9/11’s fifth anniversary in 2006, Gombe sought Nigerian Salafi scholars’ support before waging jihad. However, despite Gombe’s limiting takfir compared to Shekau, Ansaru failed to receive their support.165 This would have proven to Ansaru and observers in Boko Haram that mainstream Salafis indefinitely postponed jihad. Gombe’s attempts to win Salafi scholars’ support could be compared to jihadists elsewhere, including Indonesia, where after Indonesia’s democratization in 1999, al-Qaeda-trained Jemaa Islamiya members orchestrated major bombings in Bali, Jakarta, and other cities. However, Jemaa Islamiya’s second generation members eventually realized “rushing to martyrdom” and “shedding Muslim blood,” especially of Muslim civilians, divided the umma, caused mass arrests, and created difficulties for Islamic scholars to support imprisoned jihadists like, for example, SCSN did when Kambar’s cell members were arrested in 2006.166 Jemaa Islamiya eventually shifted to “preparation” and postponed jihad like Pantami mentioned in his sermon after 9/11’s fifth anniversary. This allowed Jemaa Islamiya to “socialize” Muslims about establishing an Islamic state through dawa, as well as collect weapons; train, including in Syria; and support Indonesia’s “likeminded Islamists” in street demonstrations.167 However, neither Ansaru nor ISWAP nor Boko Haram, which remained impatiently committed to vio-

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lence, ever reached Jemaa Islamiya–style middle ground with Nigerian Salafis. The lack of Christian “adversaries” and decreasing levels of Muslim-Christian violence in the 2000s in Indonesia, which has a 90 percent Muslim population, may have been one reason why Indonesian jihadists were more willing to postpone jihad than either Nigerian jihadists or Middle Eastern jihadists, whose raisons d’être involved combating “Crusader” armies and taghut rulers in their own region. Besides Ansaru’s failure to win Salafi scholars’ support, the group also demonstrated internal confusion about two matters: first, whether it was a global jihadist group or a central Nigeria–based Muslim self-defense militia; and, second, relations with Boko Haram. In Ansaru’s founding statement, second June 11, 2012, statement, and two June 2012 Hausa- and Englishlanguage introductory videos sent to the Desert Herald, for example, Ansaru discussed defending central Nigerian Muslims from Akhwat Akwop, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), CAN, and other “Christian terrorists”; limiting harm to civilians; and opposing Boko Haram’s leader who killed defectors to Ansaru and “abused power,” despite not mentioning Shekau’s name.168 However, in Ansaru’s introductory Hausa video with the veiled Gombe (as Abu Usama al-Ansaru) and his shura members, Gombe still acknowledged supporting Boko Haram when Boko Haram acted “righteously” and avoided “committing inexcusable actions.”169 This indicated Gombe’s potential openness to cooperation with Shekau but deprioritized global jihadist references. Gombe additionally mentioned in the introductory videos that Nigeria’s government was not “ready to take care of Muslim rights” because it was “not an Islamic government” and included the “killers of mallam Muhammed Yusuf and over seven hundred Muslims in 2009.” He stressed the “obligation of Muslims to establish their own anti-terrorist squad” to “assist Muslims and defend them,” and he referenced Muslim-Christian clashes in central Nigeria in Kafanchan, Zango-Kataf, and YelwaShendam.170 This indicated that Gombe envisioned Ansaru filling a gap by defending Nigerian Muslims, which was demanded since the 1980s and after the 2004 Yelwa-Shendam clashes by, for example, Nafiu Baba-Ahmed and Isa Ali Pantami, respectively. It is conceivable that Gombe listened to his former mentor Pantami’s 2004 Yelda-Shendam sermon, but he sided with Yusuf after the 2006 debate with Pantami because of Yusuf’s greater commitment to waging jihad. Moreover, whereas some 1990s Ahlussunnah scholars partnered with jihadists like Hassan Allane and Muhammed Ali to “defend Muslims” until their partnership collapsed by 2003, in 2012 Gombe now represented the Salafi wing and AQIM-trained Nigerians represented the jihadist wing in a similar partnership. Two days after Ansaru’s introductory videos were released, Akhwat Akwop also threatened to expel “the Fulani terrorist” from southern

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Kaduna for allegedly killing “100 southern Kaduna people.”171 Whether or not Ansaru’s videos prompted Akhwat Akwop’s threats, Akhwat Akwop’s verbal disputes with Yusuf Islamic Brothers transferred to Ansaru in 2012. This, in turn, would have further strengthened Ansaru’s commitment to defending Muslims in central Nigeria. Reminiscent of Abu Khubab al-Nayjiri’s concern about “global websites . . . misrepresenting” al-Qaeda in 2010, mentioned in Chapter 7, after Ansaru’s introductory videos’ release by the Desert Herald, Ansaru’s spokesman, Abu Ja‘afar, commented on Desert Herald’s website that he “denounced” Tukur Mamu’s video summary that added “spin” to make Ansaru appear as if it were not actually a jihadist group.172 Abu Ja‘afar then released a statement through the Desert Herald confirming Ansaru’s mission was “not different” from that of “brothers” in Boko Haram, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda, that Ansaru would “complement” what Boko Haram started in attempting to establish an Islamic state, and that Ansaru would attack “any security personnel . . . under the Kufr (Nigerian) constitution and those among us who by any means protect infidels (Christians).” Ansaru’s only “major differences” with Boko Haram were over “imamship in Islamic perspective,” referring indirectly to Shekau, and the scope of takfir.173 Compared with Gombe, Abu Ja‘afar identified more with global jihadism; indicated greater potential for reconciliation with Boko Haram members, but possibly not Shekau; and was harsher toward rank-and-file Muslim officials and Christians. However, even Abu Ja‘afar did not exhibit the same extent of global jihadist rhetoric as MUJWA or what would be expected from Khalid al-Barnawi. It is nevertheless likely that al-Barnawi was uninvolved in Ansaru’s statements to the locally based Desert Herald because he was in Mali by June 2012, as discussed subsequently. Moreover, because Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi died in March 2012, he was unable to leverage his Sahel-based jihadist experience and Nigeria-based experience with Yusuf’s followers to bridge gaps between longtime Sahelian combatants like alBarnawi and Nigerian theologians like Gombe. Meanwhile, Boko Haram’s “commander of suicide missions,” Abu Fatima, who was possibly the same militant who claimed the 2011 Federal Police headquarters suicide car bombing, told Tukur Mamu that Boko Haram and Ansaru could “work together” in the future—as they did.174 Like the Belmokhtar–AQIM feuds, which sometimes were shelved depending on circumstances, Ansaru, including Gombe and Abu Ja‘afar, and Boko Haram members, including Abu Fatima, were to varying degrees predisposed to reconciling as early as Ansaru’s founding. Furthermore, Shekau made Ansaru’s survival impossible by killing its members besides Abu Muslim al-Ibrahimi. Ahmed Salkida noted, for example, Shekau ordered beheadings of Ansaru members for retracting their loyalty to him.175 When Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe secretly traveled to Michika, Adamawa State, dur-

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ing Ramadan in July–August 2013 to preach using an abbreviated name, Muhammed Ibrahim, to disguise his identity, Boko Haram still found him and assassinated him, forcing his family to seek refuge in Gombe city.176 Gombe’s successor, also using the alias Abu Usama al-Ansari, revealed in his al-Risalah article that Shekau’s fighters also shot at Khalid al-Barnawi but missed.177 Gombe referenced this assassination attempt in Ansaru’s Hausa introductory video without mentioning names.178 Even the raid on Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi’s Zaria shura headquarters reportedly came from “direct or indirect” tips from Shekau loyalists.179 This was forewarned in the October 2011 letter to Abdullah al-Shinqiti that mentioned Shekau’s losing recordings that were captured by the government, causing the group to “forfeit some plans” and leading to “some leaders’ arrests.”180 The raid of al-Bauchi’s shura headquarters also contributed to the March 2012 and May 2012 breakups of the Sokoto- and Kano-based kidnapping cells, while tips from “a rival faction” led security forces to kill Abubakar Kambar in Kano in August 2012.181 The consequences of Shekau’s crackdown on Ansaru dissenters and leaks to, or infiltration by, Nigerian security forces meant Ansaru’s founding was fraught from the start, AQIM’s jihadist network in Nigeria was unraveling, and renewing cooperation with or fleeing from Boko Haram were the only ways for Ansaru members to survive. Nigerian Jihadists in Mali Although Shekau provided sticks to Ansaru, he also extended carrots. By Ansaru’s first written attack claim to the Desert Herald with accompanying video claim, which was more graphically sophisticated than Shekau’s 2012 video monologues owing to Ansaru members’ exposure to AQIM media and likely also their higher education levels, there were already signs of Ansaru–Boko Haram reconciliation.182 The English-language video claim from Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe (as Abu Usama al-Ansari) was overlaid by Saudi munshid (nasheed artist) Abu Ali’s famous nasheed “Allahu Akbar Ya Aqsa (Jerusalem)” and referenced Ansaru’s November 26, 2012, Abuja prison break. According to Ansaru, the operation freed one woman, thirty-seven Ansaru members, and 286 other prisoners who were subjected to “human right violation [sic],” including “absence of water,” eating “even termites,” overcrowding, and “extrajudicial killings.”183 Gombe’s referencing of “Muslim rights” in Ansaru’s June 2012 Hausa introductory video and this video’s “human right” reference reflected Gombe’s cognizance of boko humanitarian law. Meanwhile, Gombe’s written claim of the prison break (as Abu Usama al-Ansari) reflected Ansaru’s central Nigeria orientation by requesting Muslims “join us” to free women and children “captured by the Nigerian security or by the Christian [sic]” in

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Plateau State, including Yelwa-Shendam.184 Despite Gombe’s messaging, experienced fighters under Khalid al-Barnawi must have orchestrated the complex prison break operation. The prison break followed tandem suicide car bombings one day earlier that killed eleven people at a Jaji, Kaduna, military barracks church.185 Those bombings exemplified how Ansaru never claimed suicide car bombings in central Nigeria after its January 2012 founding, which were almost always attributed to Boko Haram, but Ansaru members or other AQIMtrained Nigerians were probably involved in some suicide car bombings. Typical of Ansaru’s internationalist fighters, the Jaji cell’s commander reportedly returned to Nigeria from Saudi Arabia, and cell members worked for foreign engineering companies.186 The reported “collaboration of insiders” working inside Jaji barracks with cell members suggests how the Jaji tandem suicide car bombings and kidnappings of the British, Italian, and German engineers—and Ansaru’s kidnappings of foreign engineers in Katsina and Bauchi in 2013, discussed in Chapter 9—were plotted.187 They may all have been inside jobs. After Ansaru’s prison break and the Jaji suicide car bombings, on November 29, 2012, Boko Haram released a Shekau video, which included a caption praising Ansaru’s prison break that freed “150 mujahidin” and promised an “important message for mujahidin in Mali, Somalia, and other fronts.”188 The video was subsequently reposted by two minor jihadist web forums and featured Shekau delivering an Arabic-language sermon from “Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad waging jihad in some African lands called Nigeria” in which Shekau saluted “brothers and shaikhs in the Islamic Maghreb” and “soldiers of God in the Islamic state in Mali” and requested that “God reward you [Islamic state in Mali].”189 Shekau also honored “jihadist leaders” in Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Pakistan, Kashmir, Iraq, Palestine, the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen, and Algeria.190 This video’s pro-al-Qaeda, and especially pro-AQIM, messaging revived narratives from Shekau’s July 2010 written statement and his October 2010 Eid el-Fitr message, which were released on jihadist web forums when Shekau was in AQIM’s good graces. This indicated AQIM-allied jihadists in Mali were supporting Boko Haram again by, for example, training its members, if not also promoting Shekau’s video. Besides reviving Shekau’s pro-al-Qaeda rhetoric, the video caption’s reference to Ansaru’s Abuja prison break indicated Boko Haram was newly reconciling with Ansaru, despite it not mentioning Ansaru explicitly. Shekau may even have been in the Sahel because the video featured him for the first time ever outside. Moreover, he was in a desert wearing military fatigues with fighters training in shooting. Shekau’s previous five video monologues from January to September 2012, in contrast, were all posted on YouTube, in Hausa, indoors, in imam clothing, and predomi-

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nantly about Islamic theology or Nigerian themes, especially threatening Goodluck Jonathan, denigrating Christianity, and recalling Muslim-Christian clashes, except when, for example, Shekau taunted Barack Obama for designating him a terrorist and condemned the US-made Innocence of Muslims film, which mocked Prophet Muhammad.191 Shekau’s November 29, 2012, video, therefore, seemingly corroborated Nigerian government claims about Shekau’s fleeing Kano for Mali in April 2012.192 It also implied Shekau revived jihadist contacts in Mali because the video was Boko Haram’s first message posted on jihadist web forums since Shekau’s October 2010 Eid al-Fitr message released by al-Andalus, and Shekau spoke exclusively in al-Qaeda’s lingua franca, Arabic, for his first time ever in a video while also lauding al-Qaeda. Moreover, Boko Haram was not known to maintain training camps in northeastern Nigeria’s Sahelian desert fringes by November 2012, let alone where Shekau and cofighters could openly shoot guns. Shekau, therefore, was plausibly in a Sahelian desert outside Nigeria, including Mali or Niger, from April 2012. Boko Haram’s April 12, 2012, Shekau video, which featured Shekau’s speaking Arabic for half of the video for his first time ever and sitting alongside four commanders wearing Sahelian veils, also suggested Shekau’s being in the Sahel or with formerly Sahel-based militants.193 In April 2012, AQIM’s allies also began occupying northern Mali following Libya’s 2011 civil war; a January 2012 massacre of more than a hundred Malian soldiers by the newly formed Tuareg–led jihadist group Ansar al-Din (Supporters of the Religion) and secular nationalist Malian Tuareg rebels, including some who returned to Mali from Libya; and a March 2012 military coup in Bamako.194 By July 2012, however, Ansar alDin, MUJWA, and Belmokhtar-led Katibat al-Mulathamin sidelined the Tuareg secular nationalists and began asserting jihadist rule throughout northern Mali. Shekau’s condolences in his November 29, 2012, video for Abu Yahya al-Libi’s martyrdom in June 2012 US drone strikes in Pakistan also affirmed Shekau’s video must have been filmed after al-Libi’s death. This meant Shekau and other Nigerian jihadists plausibly traveled to Mali or Niger desert areas after April 2012 and released Shekau’s video after relationships with Katibat al-Mulathamin, MUJWA, and Ansaru, including Khalid al-Barnawi, were revived. The reposting of Shekau’s November 29, 2012, video on minor jihadist web forums also indicated jihadist contacts promoted Shekau’s video, but those contacts were not formal AQIM members, who would have used alAndalus branding and major jihadist web forums, like Ansar al-Mujahideen. Rather, those contacts might have been in Katibat al-Mulathamin or MUJWA. Because Nigerians participated in Katibat al-Mulathamin’s Niamey kidnapping in January 2011, as mentioned in Chapter 7, either Katibat al-Mulathamin’s or MUJWA’s Nigerian fighters could have aided and

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encouraged their Ansaru and Boko Haram compatriots to travel from Nigeria to join them in Gao, Mali, by April 2012. One of several Nigerians arrested in Gao, for example, claimed that MUJWA “called” Nigerian fighters to travel there in April 2012.195 In addition, MUJWA’s Hamadou Kheiry and Ansar al-Din’s Mauritanian spokesman, Sanda Bouamama, who later surrendered to Mauritania, both affirmed in April 2012 and August 2012 interviews, respectively, that Nigerians were in MUJWA.196 April 2012 also saw media reports about Nigerian jihadists’ assisting MUJWA’s April 2012 attack on the Algerian consulate in Gao and Shekau’s reported travel to Mali.197 Considering the primary and secondary source evidence of Nigerians in Mali in 2012, Shekau or his fighters may have arrived in Mali and revived ties to Katibat al-Mulathimin, MUJWA, and Ansaru leadership, who then helped promote Shekau’s pro-al-Qaeda video.198 Due to Belmokhtar’s loyalty to al-Qaeda Central, but not AQIM leadership, Katibat al-Mulathamin remained allied with, but not officially part of, AQIM, and neither used al-Andalus nor official al-Qaeda media channels generally in 2012. Moreover, internal AQIM letters indicated Belmokhtar lacked, but wanted to establish, Katibat al-Mulathamin’s own communication line to the major jihadist web forum Ansar al-Mujahideen.199 Therefore, Katibat al-Mulathamin instead primarily used Mauritania-based ANI, AlAkhbar, and Sahara Media or Al Jazeera, including when claiming its “heroic” January 2011 Niamey kidnapping of the two Frenchmen in an audio-recorded message condemning France’s and Niger’s “military interference” and “not understanding lessons of past failures . . . and repeating their foolishness,” which resembled AQIM’s own claim of killing the German engineer in Kano more than one year later.200 Thus, Katibat al-Mulathamin was more likely than AQIM to assist Boko Haram in promoting Shekau’s November 29, 2012, video on minor jihadist web forums. Nevertheless, evidence that MUJWA assisted in promoting Shekau’s video was that the two minor jihadist web forums that featured the post linking to Shekau’s video were Ana al-Muslim and al-Minbar al-‘Ilami alJihadi (Jihadist Media Platform). The latter was MUJWA’s official media distributor; was established concurrently with MUJWA’s December 2011 founding; and was hosted by a French server, which was consistent with MUJWA’s francophone members, including Oumar Hamaha, who, like Ansar al-Din leader Iyad ag Ghaly, once resided in France and also visited Nigeria.201 The Gazan address of the user who registered that forum and the forum’s eventual hosting of Sinai-based Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis materials may also have related to MUJWA’s ties to Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis’s predecessor, Jamaat Tawhid wal-Jihad Fi Filistin, and MUJWA’s choosing virtually the same name as that group.202 Considering most jihadists in the Sahel from Niger in 2011 were Fulanis and Tuaregs, but not Hausas and certainly not English speakers, it is also probable the Hausa- and English-speaking

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jihadists in MUJWA’s first December 2011 video were also Nigerians, especially Ansaru members.203 A reconciliation between Shekau and Ansaru “survivors” of his retribution could have been facilitated in Mali in late 2012 by Katibat alMulathamin or MUJWA because Boko Haram members, possibly including Shekau or his loyalists, and Ansaru and other Nigerian jihadists were in Mali and Niger at that time. Niger’s counterterrorism service, for example, reported Khalid al-Barnawi and Shekau in Niger, while another Nigerian (Muhammed al-Nayjiri) wrote in discussions on a jihadist web forum in January 2013 that he was in a Niger-based “cell of al-Qaeda supporters . . . monitoring all movements of French forces.”204 This indicates there was overlap between Ansaru, Boko Haram and other Nigerian jihadists and Katibat al-Mulathimin and MUJWA by 2013, which provided opportunities for intra-Nigerian jihadist reconciliation. Belmokhtar also could have brokered reconciliation because Ansaru fighters were physically with him in Mali. Ansaru propaganda, for example, was found in his Gao compound after he fled from the French-led multinational military intervention to oust jihadists from northern Mali, codenamed Operation Serval, which commenced in December 2012.205 Belmokhtar’s pan-African Katibat al-Mulathamin subgroup, which Belmokhtar called Katibat Muwaqiun Bidima (Signatories in Blood Brigade), also conducted May 2013 suicide car bombings at French company Areva-run mines in Arlit and Agadez, northern Niger together with MUJWA, whose mujahidin shura council emir, the Western Saharan Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, co-claimed the bombings.206 Belmokhtar dedicated the bombings to former rival, Abu Zeid, who was killed by Chadian forces alongside Abdullah al-Shinqiti in northern Mali’s Adrar des Ifoghas mountains near Algeria’s border, in a video featuring Belmokhtar’s Nigerian shura member, Abu Ali al-Nayjiri.207 He identified as an Ansaru member and not as a Katibat Muwaqiun Bidima member like other Egyptians, Sudanese, Tunisians, and Western Saharans in the video.208 Ansaru’s propaganda in Belmokhtar’s compound and the Ansaru member in that video indicated Ansaru members fought alongside Belmokhtar-led Katibat al-Mulathamin or Katibat Muwaqiun Bidima fighters and their MUJWA cofighters in Mali and Niger. The presence of Nigerian jihadists in Mali and Niger, especially with Belmokhtar’s fighters and MUJWA, Shekau’s renewed pro-al-Qaeda messaging, and Boko Haram’s subtle praise of Ansaru’s prison break, indicated reconciliation was occurring. This would have involved Shekau and Boko Haram commanders like Tukur Mamu’s contact, Abu Fatima, who said Boko Haram and Ansaru could “work together” in June 2012. On Ansaru’s side, this would have involved members who were originally more predisposed than Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe to global jihadism and cooperation with Boko Haram when Ansaru was founded, including its

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spokesman Abu Ja‘afar and other operationally—but not necessarily theologically—oriented commanders like Khalid al-Barnawi. Motives and Methods for Reconciliation Before Operation Serval finally dispersed MUJWA, Katibat al-Mulathamin, and Ansar al-Din from their northern Mali strongholds in February 2013, Ansaru apparently maintained more formal global jihadist operational and media ties than Boko Haram. This was evidenced not only by Ansaru’s leaflets in Belmokhtar’s Gao compound and Ansaru member Abu Ali alNayjiri’s appearing in the joint Katibat al-Mulathamin-MUJWA northern Niger bombings written claim, but also by Ansaru’s January 22, 2013, Arabiclanguage written claim of ambushing a military convoy near Okene, Kogi, which killed three Nigerian soldiers preparing for deployment to Mali.209 This claim was Ansaru’s first claim ever being posted on a major jihadist web forum, Ansar al-Mujahideen, and not the locally styled Desert Herald, and resembled Shekau’s November 29, 2012, video by stating the Nigerian soldiers were planning to “attack the Islamic state in Mali.”210 The Ansar alMujahideen forum staff member who posted Ansaru’s Kogi claim also posted Belmokhtar’s personally signed May 2013 northern Niger bombings claim four months later, indicating Ansaru and Belmokhtar developed the same communication line to Ansar al-Mujahideen in early 2013.211 While Ansaru’s Okene, Kogi ambush reflected the tactics, targeting, and messaging of AQIM, MUJWA and Katibat al-Mulathamin, Muhammed Auwul Ibrahim Gombe, who signed the ambush claim (as Abu Usama alAnsari), may have considered the ambush part of his efforts to win Nigerian Salafi scholars’ support. The ambush occurred three weeks after Ahmad Gumi alleged that “Christian elements in the Nigerian security apparatus,” including Kaduna’s Christian governor, Patrick Yakowa, who died days earlier in a helicopter crash, were “terrorists” and “killers of innocent Muslim leaders [and] deadlier than evil Boko Haram.”212 Furthermore, on the same day as the ambush, Gumi announced that he opposed “the Christian leadership of Nigeria plunging us into Mali” and “taking sides based on foreign colonial interest and hate of Islamists forming a government in the region.”213 Gombe may have hoped Ansaru’s ambush impressed Nigerian Salafi scholars who, like Gombe and the defunct Yusuf Islamic Brothers, agreed with Ahmad Gumi’s claims about Nigeria’s Christian governors, Nigeria’s security forces, and Nigeria’s military operations in Mali. This did not mean Ahmad Gumi, a Kaduna native, was a “jihadist ideologue.” However, Gumi’s rhetoric inspired or at least overlapped with Ansaru and Ansaru’s original media contact, Tukur Mamu, respectively. Gumi similarly was “the most influential person” in Kadunaborn Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s life, although Abdulmutallab still

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“replaced” him with Anwar al-Awlaki shortly before committing to bombing the US-bound airplane in 2009.214 If the hypothesis that Gombe was seeking Nigerian Salafi scholars’ support through the Kogi ambush is correct, then the operation exemplified Ansaru’s dueling identities existing since its founding. On one end, there were Ansaru’s regional jihadists with significant combat experience like Khalid al-Barnawi, capable of masterminding the ambush and previous Abuja prison break, if not also the Jaji tandem suicide car bombings. Presumably, al-Barnawi’s experienced fighters also coordinated locally with Kogi Salafis near the ambush site per AQIM’s playbook. There were, for example, opportunities to recruit takfir-prone Salafis in Okene, Kogi, led by Mallam Baba, who shot to death nineteen worshippers at an Okene church on August 7, 2012, and shot and killed two soldiers outside an Okene mosque on August 8, which were both attributed to, but never claimed by, Boko Haram.215 Al-Barnawi’s regional jihadists might have prioritized combat operations over theology and recruited takfir-prone Okene Salafis despite those Okene Salafis’ possessing Shekau-like ideologies, at least regarding Christians and Sufis. While the reconciliation with Shekau enabled al-Barnawi to launch more attacks and embed locally again in Nigeria without Shekau’s retribution, the takfir-prone Okene Salafis who were interested in global jihad but who were unwilling to join Boko Haram because of either the distance to Borno or Shekau’s Kanuri favoritism could now benefit from being able join al-Barnawi’s fighters. Al-Barnawi may also have overlooked the Okene Salafis’ ideologies as long as they could become recruits even though this involved sacrificing the ideological principles upon which Ansaru was founded. There were other slightly less takfir-prone Salafis in Okene, Kogi influenced by the imam who preached at ABU and was inspired by Anwar alAwlaki during Muhammed Yusuf’s lifetime, Mallam Mustapha, mentioned in Chapter 6. Although Mallam Mustapha denounced Mallam Baba’s church killings in sermons in Okene’s Ebira language and reportedly beheaded Mallam Baba, who was his senior, as punishment for the church killings, one of Mallam Mustapha’s Okene-born students was arrested in Lagos after the SSS infiltrated the student’s cell.216 This student then claimed he originally joined Boko Haram when he heard Mallam Mustapha’s sermons “frowning on Western education and democratic system of government.”217 The student also stated he participated in multiple bank and market robberies to raise money; a major February 2012 prison break in Koton Karfe, Kogi that freed seven Boko Haram members, claimed by Abu Qaqa II; a major June 2014 bombing in Wuse, Abuja, claimed by Shekau; and two other major October 2015 bombings in Kuje and Nyanya, Abuja, with the latter at the same bus station as a previous April 2014 Nyanya bombing claimed by Shekau, mentioned in the next chapter.218 This student’s case suggests

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his cofighters and Kogi and Lagos militant contacts and other students of Mallam Mustapha represented ideal Ansaru recruitment targets upon alBarnawi’s return to Nigeria by 2013. Besides students of Mallam Baba and Mallam Mustapha, there were other Kogi Salafis joining Boko Haram, including a BUK Islamic studies graduate and ethnic Igala who later attended sermons by Kogi-born, IUMeducated Izala preacher Mohammed Nazeef Yunus, who studied at Maiduguri’s Kanemi Institute of Islamic Theology around the same time as Muhammed Yusuf.219 Abu Aisha was imprisoned with Nazeef Yunus and denied Nazeef Yunus ever joined Boko Haram.220 Although Nazeef Yunus acknowledged teaching the BUK graduate, he stated the graduate left him when he preached against Boko Haram, and only then did that graduate travel to Sambisa with another Kogi comember and plan attacks in Kogi’s Igalaland.221 Therefore, other Kogi-based students leaving Izala’s fold for global jihadism, much like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab left Ahmad Gumi for al-Awlaki, would have been Ansaru’s recruitment targets. Along with Mallam Baba’s and Mallam Mustapha’s Ebira students, Kogi Igalas would also have been able to provide Khalid al-Barnawi with fighters after his late-2012 reconciliation with Shekau. One explanation for Ansaru’s January 2013 Okene, Kogi ambush, Ansaru’s post-2012 basing in Kogi, where al-Barnawi was eventually arrested in 2016, and the unexpected growth of jihadism as far south as Kogi, which lacked a history of Muslim-Christian clashes, was the existence of an ABU-affiliated Okene-based anti-Sufi dawa society headed by an Izala-supported imam who preached at Okene Federal College of Education.222 The imam was the son of a prominent Islamic scholar who studied under Yoruba scholars who migrated to and helped Islamize postcolonial Ebiraland but clashed with “traditional worshippers,” especially Kogi’s maskwearing dancers (masqueraders).223 While the dawa society never supported Boko Haram, its anti-Sufi dawa combined with post-9/11 global jihadist ideology, especially Anwar al-Awlaki’s English-language YouTube sermons, may have influenced young, educated imams like Mallam Mustapha. He then laid the ideological groundwork for jihadism at his Okene-based center, Markaz Ahlussunnah wal-Jamma, before the SSS arrested him and destroyed his mosque in an operation targeting what was still locally called the “Mallam Baba terrorist group” in 2015.224 Besides the ideological dimension, Ebiraland’s well-known strategic location south of Abuja as the gateway to southern Nigeria made it an ideal Ansaru base because Ansaru also maintained Lagos-based cells, including that of Abu Zeid–trained Abu Nasir. In addition, Kogi was far enough from Shekau’s bases in northeastern Nigeria that it allowed Ansaru breathing room in case conflict rose again with Shekau. The spread of Mallam Baba and Mallam Mustapha’s dawa, Mallam Mustapha’s contacts to Muhammed Yusuf’s

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followers before July 2009, Ansaru’s post-2012 Kogi-based operations, and the al-Barnawi–Shekau reconciliation could also explain why a shura member from Okene cosigned with al-Barnawi the letter to Abdullah al-Shinqiti preceding Ansaru’s January 2012 announcement of its founding; Kogi bombmaking factories were uncovered by Nigerian security forces from April to August 2012; an “IS-inspired,” Ebira-led “joint Ansaru–Boko Haram cell” was reported in Okene in 2014; and Muslim “masquerade custodians” in Okene were assassinated in 2012 and again in 2018.225 In contrast to al-Barnawi’s regionally experienced fighters and local recruits in Kogi, there were also central Nigeria–oriented and theologically committed Ansaru leaders like Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe who desired Nigerian Salafi scholars’ support when waging jihad. They welcomed attacks like the Kogi ambush that aligned with both the global jihad interests of al-Qaeda and the rhetoric of Nigerian Salafi scholars like Ahmad Gumi. However, unlike Khalid al-Barnawi, Ansaru leaders like Gombe might have opposed reconciling with Shekau and recruiting takfir-prone Kogi Salafis because Gombe prioritized theology over operational expediency and viewed Shekau and takfir-prone Salafis as liabilities. This would also explain why Boko Haram assassinated Gombe, but not Khalid al-Barnawi, in 2013 and why Abu Musab eulogized Gombe in his June 2018 book discussing the “tumor” Shekau’s ideology represented.226 Abu Musab might not have done this if Gombe had ever reconciled with Shekau. The al-Barnawi–Shekau reconciliation, according to Isa Ali Pantami, involved AQIM’s “returning” al-Barnawi to Nigeria to reconcile with Shekau.227 However, according to Fulan Nasrullah, it was not AQIM but specifically Belmokhtar and Abu Mundhir al-Shinqiti who requested alBarnawi engage in taslim (reconciliation) with Shekau to reestablish alQaeda cells in Nigeria.228 Other Ansaru members who returned to Nigeria from Mali with al-Barnawi reportedly included Abu Ali al-Nayjiri; Abu Fudhail al-Nayjiri; an AQIM-trained media activist, Abu Tawhid al-Nayjiri; and Nigerian Yorubas, who possibly joined cells with members like Lagos-based Abu Nasir.229 Despite Boko Haram’s previous attempt to kill al-Barnawi, such a reconciliation would not have been atypical because even Belmokhtar and AQIM leaders managed to feud and cooperate throughout Belmokhtar’s career and Abu Mundhir al-Shinqiti reconciled with al-Qaeda’s jihadist scholars after initially supporting IS, mentioned in the next chapter. Moreover, al-Andalus’s director, Abu Abdullah Ahmed, used the honorific hafidhahullah (may God preserve him) to describe Shekau when responding to a September 2012 online interview question about jihad in the Sahel from prominent jihadist media activist Muawiyah al-Qahtani,230 who is also discussed in the next chapter.231 Abu Abdullah Ahmed further stated AQIM and Boko Haram were in “one trench,” “cooperated,” and had “ties of loyalty.”232 This indicated AQIM’s publicly rehabilitating Shekau

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when Nigerian jihadists were in Mali in 2012 and that AQIM would accept Belmokhtar-brokered Ansaru–Boko Haram reconciliation. Even though AQIM’s highest level sharia officials, al-Bulaydi and Essoufi, reluctantly approved Ansaru’s separation from Shekau in late 2011, their preference, like other high-level al-Qaeda leaders, was jihadist unity. Therefore, al-Barnawi–Shekau reconciliation represented returning to the preAnsaru founding status quo and respected al-Qaeda Central’s strategic and ideological principles. Belmokhtar, as opposed to AQIM itself, would most probably guide this reconciliation considering his embeddedness in Mali and Niger with Ansaru members, his record of feuds and reconciliations, his history with Khalid al-Barnawi, his receiving al-Barnawi’s and his shura members’ October 2011 correspondence about Shekau, and his role, at least alongside MUJWA, in promoting Shekau’s November 29, 2012, pro-al-Qaeda video and producing Ansaru propaganda. Additionally, a Belmokhtar assistant established “translation offices” in Mali to recruit Africans, reportedly including Boko Haram members, which further exemplified Belmokhtar’s capacity to facilitate Ansaru–Boko Haram reconciliation.233 The reconciliation terms included that al-Barnawi’s fighters would conduct kidnapping operations in Boko Haram’s name and share ransoms with Shekau. Furthermore, Shekau appointed al-Barnawi’s deputy, Babagana Assalafi, who was reportedly involved in the 2011 UN bombing, as Boko Haram’s leader in Sokoto.234 However, Babagana Assalafi was killed with three fighters in Mabera, Sokoto, in March 2013, perhaps not coincidentally being the same district where the British and Italian hostages were killed one year earlier in the al-Barnawi-masterminded kidnapping operation.235 Shekau might have recognized that Boko Haram needed expertise from the elite Ansaru and AQIM-trained Nigerian jihadists allied with Belmokhtar, MUJWA, and Khalid al-Barnawi to bolster Boko Haram’s military capabilities and raise funds from ransoms to support Boko Haram’s new strategy in 2013: conquering rural Borno. Although those fighters’ loyalty to Shekau was doubtable, the reconciliation terms resembled the intended cooperation between AQIM-trained Nigerians and Shekau when the former began returning to Nigeria in 2010. While that cooperation collapsed, this reconciliation offered a second chance for cooperation. Al-Barnawi also entered this reconciliation from a weak position. Operation Serval and its 2014 replacement, Operation Barkhane, reduced jihadist operations in Mali until 2015. It was, for example, not from Mali but Libya’s unstable borderlands that Belmokhtar masterminded Katibat Muwaqiun Bidima’s January 2013 attack at Algeria’s In Amenas gas plant, which was run by Algeria-based Sonatrach, Britain-based BP, and Norway-based Statoil.236 After the In Amenas attack, which killed thirty-seven foreigners, Katibat Muwaqiun Bidima and MUJWA conducted the May 2013 northern Niger bombings that killed around thirty people, mostly soldiers. Both oper-

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ations vindicated Belmokhtar, who was criticized in 2012 by AQIM’s shura for Katibat al-Mulathamin’s failing to conduct “special operations” (al‘amiliyat al-nuw‘aiya) and for his being “obsessed” with moving Katibat alMulathamin into Libya, despite Droukdel’s assigning Abu Zeid responsibility to “manage the Libya portfolio.”237 Both the January 2013 In Amenas attack and May 2013 northern Niger bombings also benefited from “inside knowledge.”238 This is why Ansaru’s kidnappings of foreigners in Nigeria, if not also the Okene, Kogi ambush, and Jaji barracks tandem suicide car bombings, which all required advance planning and local intelligence, reflected Belmokhtar’s influence. Belmokhtar’s distance from Nigeria and deep hiding in Libya from 2013 onward, however, meant al-Barnawi lost his longtime Sahel-based jihadist partner and was increasingly isolated. Besides Belmokhtar’s basing in Libya and the two-year reduction of jihadist activities in Mali, Operation Serval also caused the deaths of dozens of other jihadists. Among them were not only Abu Zeid and Abdullah al-Shinqiti but also Abdullah Abu al-Hassan al-Shinqiti, who had written correspondence countering Shekau’s position on takfir, Oumar Hamaha, and two Belmokhtar couriers to Nigerian jihadists, Joulebib and the Beninese Yoruba head of MUJWA’s December 2012–founded Usman dan Fodio brigade, Abdullah Abdullah.239 In addition, Belmokhtar’s assistant who established translation offices in Mali to recruit Boko Haram members was arrested. This meant Khalid al-Barnawi’s main interlocutors to AQIM and Belmokhtar were eliminated in 2013 and 2014. Meanwhile, in Nigeria, key AQIM-trained Ansaru commanders were dead by 2013, including Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi and his shura comembers in Kaduna and Abubakar Kambar in Kano. Additionally, the Sokoto and Kano kidnapping cells were dismantled, and Babagana Assalafi was killed. Khalid al-Barnawi, therefore, was isolated from Sahelian jihadists and facing difficulties operating in Nigeria, including in Kaduna, Kano, and Sokoto. However, reconciling with Shekau could allow him to operate anew in Nigeria and, as it turned out, somewhat separate from Shekau’s strongholds across the border in northern Cameroon and in Kogi and eventually also northwestern Nigeria, including Zamfara, before his arrest. Though short-lived, Khalid al-Barnawi’s renewed cooperation with Shekau contributed to Boko Haram’s conquering territory in 2013. However, it also reignited demand from Shekau’s dissenters to finally depose him, with IS support, when they realized Shekau’s megalomania was insufferable and the “tumor” of his ideology had to be eradicated. Notes

1. Agbo, “Bin Laden’s Men.” 2. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 39. 3. Ibid.

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4. Daily Trust, “Suspected Boko Haram Gunmen.” 5. Desert Herald, “Borno’s Blind War.” 6. Punch, “Boko Haram Posters.” 7. Agence France-Presse, “Christmas Attacks.” 8. Nasrullah, “Can Senegal Bear the Costs.” 9. Forbes, “Revisiting.” 10. Adegbamigbe, “Osama’s Nigerian Agents.” 11. Al-Awlaki, “Boko Haram,” post #26, post #31, post #45. 12. Al Jazeera, “Muslim Group.” 13. Nairaland, “Explosions”; RayPower2, “Islamic Sect’s Clash.” 14. Nairaland, “Explosions”; Wells, “Primary School.” 15. Nairaland, “Explosions.” 16. Ibid. 17. News24, “Nigerian Court”; Okezie, “From Nollywood.” 18. Although Jos in Plateau State, Kaduna State, Kogi State, and Abuja Federal Capital Territory (FCT) are considered northern Nigeria in political contexts, references hereafter are to their geographic location in central Nigeria. Aside from Abuja, these states also culturally comprise part of Nigeria’s “Middle Belt.” 19. Africa Confidential, “Taking the Hostage Road”; anonymous UK official discussion, 2013; Offor, “FBI Links Al-Qaeda.” 20. BBC, “Nigerian Capital.” 21. Musa, “Nonviolent Muslim Cleric.” 22. Pantami interview; Nuhu, “Aqidun”; Abdulqadir, “Analytical Study,” 99. 23. Nkereuwem, “Gunmen Kill Alhaji.” 24. Vanguard, “We Killed.” 25. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 230; BH, “We’re Not Boko.” 26. Nasrullah discussion; Anthony, “Art of Making.” 27. Agence France-Presse, “Nigerian Islamists Vow.” 28. Salkida, “Story”; Odunsi, “Former IGP.” 29. Idris, “IG.” 30. Salkida, “Story.” 31. UN Security Council, “Letter Pursuant,” 66–67. 32. Agence France-Presse, “Nigerian ‘Bomber’ Video.” 33. Nigerian Voice, “UN House Bombing.” 34. Zenn, “Al-Shabab.” 35. Ibid. 36. Eboh, “Mamman Nur.” 37. Sahara Reporters, “Gov’t Frees.” 38. Nasrullah, Twitter, April 2, 2016; Nasrullah, Twitter, April 22, 2019; Brown, “Cracks,” 13, 18. 39. Nasrullah, “Can Senegal Bear the Costs.” 40. Mustapha interview. 41. US Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Sanctions.” 42. Nasrullah, “Can Senegal Bear the Costs”; Lahoud et al., “Letters from Abbottabad,” 18. 43. Al-Libi, “Army of Hardship.” 44. Zenn, “Primer”; Zenn, “Author’s Data.” 45. Zenn, “Author’s Data. 46. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 38. 47. Horowitz, “Non-State Actors.” 48. Zenn, “AQIM—Early Suicide Bomb.” 49. Botha, “2007 Suicide Attacks,” 539–540; al-Libi, “Strewing Jewels”; Tlemcani, “He Has Officiated.” 50. Botha, “2007 Suicide Attacks,” 533. 51. Premium Times, “Boko Haram Speaks.” 52. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 94. 53. Nnochiri, “I’ve No Case.” 54. BH, “ThisDay Attack.”

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55. H. Ibrahim, “Boko Haram Kills 36.” 56. See April 12, 2012, video at Zenn, “Abubakar Shekau—First 5.” 57. Idris, “Boko Haram Claims.” 58. Premium Times, “Boko Haram National”; Biu interview. 59. Nnochiri, “Kabiru Sokoto Sues.” 60. Ayorinde, “How Kabiru.” 61. Premium Times, “Police Investigation.” 62. Ibid.; Biu interview. 63. The Nation, “Suspect Gives SSS.” 64. Nigerian Voice, “Boko Haram Guns Down.” 65. Vanguard, “Catholic Church Bombing”; Biu interview. 66. Leadership, “Power Tussle.” 67. Biu interview. 68. Sahara Reporters, “Why We Struck Kano.” 69. See January 26, 2012, video at Zenn, “Abubakar Shekau—First 5.” 70. Sahara Reporters, “Our Next Target.” 71. Seignobos, “Boko Haram,” 92. 72. Idris, “Blasts Hit Maiduguri.” 73. BBC, “Nigeria Christians”; Nigerian Voice, “War Drums.” 74. Mamah, “Rival Group”; Yusuf Islamic Brothers, “Fatwa”; Daily Trust, “Troubling Dimension.” 75. Akhwat Akwop, “Complete Text”; Nigerian Voice, “War Drums”; National Mirror Online, “New Deadly Sect.” 76. Niger Delta Standard, “Akhwat Akwop.” 77. Leadership, “We Won’t Dialogue.” 78. Ibid.; Idonor and Marama, “Boko Haram Sect”; Yusuf Islamic Brothers, “Call to Service.” 79. Zenn, “Author’s Data”; Nigerian Voice, “War Drums.” 80. See January 26, 2012, video at “Abubakar Shekau—First 5”; Mahmood, “More than Propaganda,” 10–11. 81. Mahmood, “More than Propaganda,” 10–11. 82. Nigerian Voice, “War Drums”; BBC, “Nigerians Flee.” 83. Sounaye, “Salafi Revolution,” 6. 84. Agence France-Presse, “Nigeria Declares.” 85. Ibid. 86. Newsrescue.com, “Nigerian Muslims.” 87. Musa Ibrahim, “In Search of a Plausible Theory,” 30. 88. Newsrescue.com, “Nigerian Muslims.” 89. Daily Star, “Suspected Islamists”; A. Muhammad, “Explosions Rock”; BBC, “Deadly Attack”; Tukur, “Kaduna Bomb”; BBC, “Nigeria Polio Vaccinators.” 90. Anonymous FBI investigator discussion. 91. Ibid.; News.com.au, “Nigerian Bombs.” 92. BBC, “Boko Haram Blamed”; Eboh, “Police Blame Islamist Sect.” 93. Data from Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST), https://cpost .uchicago.edu/. 94. Harnischfeger, “9/11 in Nigeria.” 95. Isah, “There Is No Security”; Sahara Reporters, “There Is No Compulsion.” 96. See Zenn, “Abubakar Shekau—First 5.” 97. Anonymous journalist interviewing Abubakar Kambar interview. 98. Sahara Reporters, “Gov’t Frees.” 99. Biu interview. 100. Nasrullah interview. 101. BBC, “Kebbi Kidnap”; ABC.net.au, “Video”; Daily Mail, “Hostage Rescue.” 102. Agence France-Presse, “Al-Qaeda Releases Audio”; Reuters, “Aid Worker Hostages.” 103. Daily Mail, “Hostages’ Families.” 104. ANI, “Mort des deux.” 105. Sahara Reporters, “Boko Haram Denies”; BH, “ThisDay Attack.” 106. Leadership, “Power Tussle.”

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107. AQIM, “Save My Life.” 108. AQIM, “To German Government.” 109. Anonymous UK official discussion, 2013. 110. AQIM, “To German Government.” 111. See Zenn, “Filiz Gelowicz.” 112. Zeid, “AQIM Response”; Droukdel, “Condition of Mujahidin.” 113. Robertson and Cruickshank, “Al-Qaeda Eyes.” 114. Agence France-Presse, “German Kidnap.” 115. Ibid. 116. AQIM, “Statement on Killing.” 117. Al-Chourouk, “Untitled.” 118. Real name: Ahmed Daghdagh. 119. Ansar al-Mujahideen, “Answers of Open Interview,” 21, 36, 45, 71; AP, “Al-Qaida Papers: A Disciplinary Letter,” 20. 120. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 18. 121. In French: Institut Supérieur d’Études et de Recherches Islamiques. 122. Real name: Hacene Ould Khalil. 123. Uthman, “Abdullah al-Shinqiti”; Moustapha, “AQIM Haunted.” 124. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 12. 125. Ibid., 13. 126. Ibid. 127. Ibid. 128. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 13–14. 129. Tawil, “Algerian Armed Islamic Group.” 130. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 13–14. 131. Aisha interview, 2019. 132. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 38–39. 133. Ibid., 41. 134. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 12. 135. Hisham, “Exclusive Interview”; Hisham, “Shaykh Abu”; Hisham, “Shaykh Usama”; Hisham, “Scattering of Jewels”; al-Ansari, “Message from Nigeria.” See also Hayyan, “Stations.” 136. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 19–65. 137. Al-Zawahiri, “Three Shaykhs.” 138. Real name: Necib Tayeb. Arrested in 2012 en route to Mali. See AQIM, “Answers,” 9. 139. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 11; AP, “Al-Qaida Papers: A Disciplinary Letter,” 7. 140. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 11–12; al-Ansari, “Message from Nigeria,” 21. 141. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 11–12. 142. Vanguard, “Splinter Group.” 143. Sahara Reporters, “Why We Struck Kano.” 144. French name: Mouvement pour l’unicité et le jihad en Afrique de l’Ouest (MUJAO). Arabic name: Jamaat Tawhid wal-Jihad Fi Gharb Ifriqiya. 145. News24, “Radical Islamist.” 146. Agence France-Presse, “New Qaeda”; News24, “Radical Islamist Group Threatens France.” 147. News24, “Radical Islamist”; Agence France-Presse, “New Qaeda”; MUJWA, “Events of Life,” 15:15; Maaly, “Al-Qaeda and its Allies.” 148. Ansaru, “Announcing Formation.” 149. ICC, “ICC Trial Chamber.” 150. MUJWA, “Implementing Sharia”; AP, “Al-Qaida Papers: Al-Qaida’s Sahara Playbook,” 7; AP, “Al-Qaida Papers: How to Win.” 151. Zenn, “Ansaru, Graphic.” 152. Aisha interview, 2019; AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 20. 153. An exception was the pro-al-Qaeda Uzbek group, Katibat Tawhid wal-Jihad, in Syria, which nevertheless was a “Katiba,” not a “Jamaa.” Abu Muhammed al-Maqdisi’s website was also called Minbar Tawhid wal-Jihad, but he criticized his former student Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for “copyright infringement” of the website’s name. Roggio, “Philippine jihadist.” 154. Zenn, “Ansaru, Graphic.” 155. Nasrullah, Twitter, April 2, 2016; Aisha interview, 2019.

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156. Nasrullah, “Survival and Expansion,” 21. 157. ThisDay, “Wanted Journalist”; Desert Herald, “Sheikh Gumi”; Ahmadu-Suka, “Gumi’s Daughter”; Concern Members of JIBWIS, “Tukur Mamu.” 158. Desert Herald, “Boko Haram.” 159. Desert Herald, “Sheikh Gumi”; Desert Herald, “Boko Haram.” 160. Otegwu, “Insurgency,” 176. 161. Mamu, “Izala in Perspective”; Desert Herald, “$2 Billion Arms Deal”; Otegwu, “Insurgency,” 83, 138, 141. 162. Ben Amara, “Izala Movement,” 286–289. 163. Aisha interview, 2019. 164. Ibid. 165. Pantami interview. 166. Hwang, “Dakwah,” 28–30. 167. Ibid. 168. Ansaru, “Introduction”; Desert Herald, “Jama’atu”; Ansaru, “Announcing Formation.” 169. Ansaru, “Introduction” (Hausa version). 170. Ibid. (Hausa and English versions). 171. Sahara Reporters, “Christian Militants.” 172. Mamu, “Another Islamic Sect.” 173. Desert Herald, “Security Officials.” 174. Mamu, “Another Islamic Sect.” 175. Salkida, Twitter, November 1, 2014. 176. Pantami interview. 177. Al-Ansari, “Message from Nigeria,” 21. 178. Ansaru, “Introduction” (Hausa version). 179. Leadership, “Power Tussle.” 180. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 15. 181. Africa Confidential, “Abuja’s Foreign Legion.” 182. Ansaru, “Prison Break”; Desert Herald, “New Islamic Sect;” Nasrullah discussion. 183. Ansaru, “Prison Break.” 184. Desert Herald, “New Islamic Sect.” 185. Telegraph, “11 killed.” 186. Nmodu, “Nigerian Troops.” 187. Inyang, “Aftermath.” 188. The video appears to have been first posted on Shumukh al-Islam and then archive.org on November 29, 2012, but was removed by Shumukh al-Islam. Shekau, “God’s Soldiers.” 189. Shekau, “God’s Soldiers,” 5:10, 7:50. 190. Ibid., 7:50–9:00. 191. See August 4, 2012, and September 30, 2012, videos at Zenn, “Abubakar Shekau— First 5.” 192. Omonobi, “Boko Haram Leader.” 193. See April 12, 2012, video at Zenn, “Abubakar Shekau—First 5.” 194. ImazighenLibya, “Battle.” 195. Radio Hanna, “Mali Armed Forces.” 196. Ansar al-Mujahideen, “Open Meeting,” 26; al-Akhbar, “Leader”; Kassataya.com, “Senda Bouamama.” 197. Vanguard, “Dozens.” 198. See also Hinshaw, “Timbuktu Training Site”; Salem discussion. 199. AP, “Al-Qaida Papers: A Disciplinary Letter,” 13. 200. Al Jazeera, “Katibat al-Mulathamin Statement.” 201. Memri Cyber and Jihad Lab, “Jihadi Forum”; Thiénot, “Djihadiste”; AQAP, Al-Masra no. 45, 4. 202. Memri Cyber and Jihad Lab, “Jihadi Forum.” 203. Agence France-Presse, “New Qaeda.” 204. Ministère de l’Intérieur, “Rapport,” 9–10; Ministère de l’Intérieur, “Condensé,” 6; alNayjiri, “Call to Strike.” 205. Staveland, “Islamistgruppe.”

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206. ANI, “Belmokhtar Claims Responsibility”; Belmokhtar, “Katibat Muwaqiun Bidima,” 0:58; Al-Sahrawi, “Katibat Ansar al-Sunna.” 207. Reuters, “Al-Qaeda Group”; Ministère de l’Intérieur, “Evaluation,” 9–11. MUJWA and Ansaru were involved in a June 2, 2013 Niamey prison break that freed two Ansaru members and a Sudanese arms dealer. 208. ANI, “Signed in Blood Battalion”; Katibat al-Mulathamin, “Epic Battles,” 30:25–31:00. 209. Ansaru, “Targeting Nigerian Soldiers.” 210. Ibid. 211. Belmokhtar, “Statement of Khalid Abu al-Abbas.” 212. Premium Times, “Nigeria’s Anti-Terror War.” 213. Sahara Reporters, “Sheikh Gumi.” 214. Perry, “Level of Danger,” 47. 215. BBC, “Nigeria Okene City Gunmen.” 216. Mustapha, “Deeper Life Church”; Nasrullah, “Okene: Long Awaited Battleground”; Nasrullah, “Okene SITREP”; Yaqoub, “Assessment,” 46; Markaz Ahlissunah Waljama, “Biography.” 217. Hanafi, “We Used Proceeds.” 218. France24, “Gunmen Storm”; Hanafi, “We Used Proceeds.” 219. Ibeh, “Kogi University Lecturer.” 220. Aisha interview, 2019. 221. Ibeh, “Kogi University Lecturer.” 222. Jimba, “Muslims,” 10, 13; Salihu, “Looming Religious War.” 223. Gusau, “Tribute.” 224. Hanafi, “We Used Proceeds”; Markaz Ahlissunah Waljama, “Biography”; Premium Times, “Ten Killed.” 225. AP, “Nigeria Forces”; Reuters, “Police Raid”; Pérouse de Montclos, “Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria,” 894; Leadership, “Gunmen Kill”; Punch, “Gunmen Kill.” 226. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 38–39. 227. Pantami discussion. 228. Nasrullah, Twitter, August 16, 2019. See also Ministère de l’Intérieur, “Evaluation,” 9–11. 229. Nasrullah, Twitter, April 2, 2016; Nasrullah discussion. 230. Alias: Abdullah al-Mutlaq. 231. Ansar al-Mujahideen, “Answers of Open Interview,” 27. 232. Ibid., 21–22, 85. 233. Ennahar, “Algerian Court.” 234. Africa Confidential, “Taking the Hostage Road.” 235. Leadership, “Power Tussle.” 236. Equinor, “Main Conclusions.” 237. AP, “Al-Qaida Papers: A Disciplinary Letter,” 13–14 238. Equinor, “Main Conclusions”; Look, “Miners Assess New Risk.” 239. JNIM, “Whoever Warns,” 10:00-10:50; RFI, “Béninois”; anonymous UK official discussion, 2015; Morgan, “Sandstorm.”

9 Allegiance to the Islamic State

After Khalid al-Barnawi and Abubakar Shekau reconciled, on February 16, 2013, Ansaru kidnapped seven engineers from Britain, Italy, Greece, Lebanon, and the Philippines working for French company Setraco in Bauchi, which was facilitated by nearby prison and police station attacks diverting security forces’ attention from the engineers’ worksite.1 These were Ansaru’s nearest operations to Shekau’s Borno strongholds and indicated the two groups were converging geographically. Allegations presented against Khalid al-Barnawi after his 2016 arrest in Kogi asserted he oversaw Ansaru’s March 2013 killing of the seven foreign engineers at one of Boko Haram’s Sambisa Forest camps.2 Sambisa, which extends from Maiduguri’s southern tip to Adamawa’s northern border, became Shekau’s base for launching rural guerrilla warfare starting in February 2013 when Nigeria’s army first reported killing Boko Haram members in Sambisa.3 Ansaru and Boko Haram operational areas were, therefore, overlapping for the first time in March 2013. This kidnapping in Bauchi was among the indicators of the Boko HaramAnsaru reconciliation following Operation Serval’s dispersal of fighters from Mali. It also generated interest from jihadists media activists abroad who facilitated Boko Haram’s loyalty pledge (baya) to IS two years later. International Kidnappings and Contacts After the Mali Intervention On March 1, 2013, Boko Haram released a video of Abubakar Shekau with armed militants in a forested area for his first time ever.4 Shekau presumably fled the desert after the November 29, 2012, video and Operation Serval’s December 2012 launch and entered Sambisa before March 2013. He

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was accompanied in Sambisa not only by Ansaru’s kidnappers but also by Mommudu Abu Fatima, whose name appeared captioned alongside marching fighters in the video.5 It was unclear whether he was the same Boko Haram commander named Abu Fatima who told the Desert Herald’s Tukur Mamu in June 2012 that Ansaru and Boko Haram might “work together,” but that latter Abu Fatima was correct because the two groups overlapped and inevitably cooperated in Sambisa.6 Ansaru member Abu Nasir also confirmed the two groups’ “doing operations together” in an April 2013 interview, despite disagreeing with Boko Haram’s “indiscriminate methods,” and asserted that “white men” and “Zionists” would continue to be kidnapped “everywhere.”7 Boko Haram’s cooperation with Ansaru, AQIM-trained, or formerly Mali-based militants occurred again two days after Ansaru’s Bauchi kidnapping. On February 19, 2013, a French engineer working for the French company GDF Suez and his daughter, two sons, wife, brother, and sister-in-law were kidnapped on safari in Waza, Far North Region, Cameroon, near Borno’s border. One week later, the family and three uniformed militants appeared in an unbranded YouTube video in front of a flag with a generic, but Boko Haram–like, logo. One commander spoke only in Arabic, which was atypical for Boko Haram except for Shekau’s November 29, 2012, video, and threatened to behead the family to avenge France’s “war on Islam.”8 The target (French engineer), tactic (kidnapping of Westerners), claim (about France), and language (Arabic) were more typical of AQIM, MUJWA, Katibat al-Mulathamin, Khalid al-Barnawi, and Ansaru than Boko Haram. However, the commander also held a script, declared his cofighters were not called Boko Haram but “Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad waging jihad in some African lands called Nigeria,” threatened Goodluck Jonathan, demanded imprisoned wives of Boko Haram members in Nigeria and imprisoned Boko Haram members in Cameroon be released, and promised to establish an “Islamic State in Nigeria” (dawlat al-Islam fi Nigeria).9 These verbal cues were too distinctly like Boko Haram for impersonators to have concocted without any Boko Haram contacts. Rather, the kidnappers must have coordinated messaging with Boko Haram despite their target, tactic, claim, and language implying they were from Mali-based jihadist groups or Ansaru like the previous Kebbi and Sokoto, Kano, and Bauchi cells that also kidnapped Western engineers. Later in 2013 al-Andalus released an AQIM Sahara region video featuring Jemal Oukacha and Sudanese, Malian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Algerian, Mauritanian, Egyptian, and Nigerian (Muhammed al-Nayjiri) militants, whose diverse nationalities resembled those of Katibat Muwaqiun Bidima. The Tunisian referenced “the seven Frenchmen kidnapped in Nigeria and Cameroon,” which seemingly confirmed the role of AQIM or AQIM’s allies in the French family’s kidnapping.10 Mali-based Nigerians, including al-

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Barnawi’s fighters, who fought alongside AQIM’s allies, opposed French-led Operation Serval, and contacted Boko Haram after relocating to northern Cameroon by February 2013 might, therefore, have conducted the French family’s kidnapping, which was Boko Haram’s first ever operation in Cameroon after years of recruiting across Nigeria-Cameroon borderlands. If militants who conducted the French family’s kidnapping were involved with AQIM and its allies in Mali, their relocation to Cameroon would have coincided with Operation Serval’s dispersal of fighters from Mali after December 2012. They would have fled Mali to northern Cameroon and used their kidnapping expertise to capture the French family while liaising with Boko Haram for their video claim and demands to Nigeria and Cameroon for the family’s release. Further, if the kidnappers were involved with AQIM and its allies and arrived in northern Cameroon to open Boko Haram’s new front there, they would have implemented the reconciliation between Shekau and al-Barnawi while recruiting locally using AQIM’s playbook. In Cameroon, recruitment targets included rural communities undergoing Salafi proselytization through dawa by Chad’s Izala equivalent, Ansar al-Sunna; Cameroonian alumni of Sudanese universities where Boko Haram developed recruitment networks; and trainees of Boko Haram camps established after the July 2009 clashes, including by Mamman Nur and Bana Banki, who was from Tchéré, near Maroua, Cameroon, and pursued Islamic studies in Banki, where he became Yusuf’s follower.11 However, jihadists newly relocating to northern Cameroon would also encounter Central Saharan road-robbers (coupeurs de route) locally called zarquina (Chadian Arabic for “blue-veils”), whose operations were pushed to Cameroon’s Far North Region by Cameroon’s US-trained Rapid Intervention Battalion (known by the French acronym, BIR) throughout the 2000s. Zarquina would have been ideal jihadist recruits considering their cross-border hostage-taking, banditry, and trafficking expertise.12 This would also resemble how young Malians who were expert at traversing borders, had tribal leadership contacts, and found “social redemption” through income-generating trafficking activities became Belmokhtar’s primary recruitment targets from 2002 onward, including Sultan Ould Bady. 13 However, traffickers with theological training, like Oumar Hamaha, who studied Islam in Mauritania in the 1980s and embraced the Tablighi Jamaat in the 1990s, were greater assets.14 The French family’s kidnapping inspired intra-jihadist online debate in which hard-liners cited Saudi Salafi scholar Muhammad ibn alUthaymeen’s fatwa regarding Israeli children to argue killing the French children was also permissible, despite that fatwa’s interpretation being debated by, among others, Anwar al-Awlaki and his followers on his blog.15 The jihadist media activist on Twitter who advocated most strongly for beheading the family “al-Zarqawi-style” was Muawiyah al-Qahtani, whose

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writings indicated that he once personally knew AQAP’s founders, including Said al-Shihri, and that he was arrested twice in Iraq, where he became close to Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s future deputy, the Syrian Abu Muhammed al-Adnani. He had also urged AQIM to avenge France’s “Crusader tendency” in 2010.16 Despite al-Qahtani’s exhortation, the French family was taken to Borno and featured in March 15 and March 18 Boko Haram– branded proof-of-life videos addressed to Cameroonian authorities. The first video showed the family in split screen with Shekau, and the second showed the family with twenty fighters in Sambisa and the father demanding Nigeria release imprisoned wives of Boko Haram members and Cameroon release imprisoned Boko Haram members, like the demands in the February proof-of-life video. In addition, the March 18 video featured nasheeds declaring Izala wrong for “preaching politics is better than prayers,” referring to Abubakar Gumi’s 1980s quote, and calling Izala “fake Muslims” for “giving us the name Boko Haram to create mistrust between Nigerian people and us.”17 The family was finally released to Cameroonian authorities “between the border of Nigeria and Cameroon” in April 2013, reportedly for a $3 million ransom and the release of sixteen prisoners.18 Ansaru’s February 2013 Bauchi kidnapping of the seven engineers separately inspired online interest. Ansaru claimed that kidnapping in a February 19, 2013, e-mail to the Desert Herald from Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe (as Abu Usama al-Ansari) warning against repeating the previous failed Sokoto and Kano rescue attempts, which indicated Ansaru’s links to those two kidnapping cells and resembled the messaging of Katibat al-Mulathamin’s Niamey kidnapping in 2011 and the AQIMclaimed kidnapping of the German engineer in Kano in 2012.19 The e-mail further condemned “European transgressions in Afghanistan and Mali,” which demonstrated a more international perspective than Ansaru’s messages from Gombe and Abu Ja‘afar in 2012 and resembled the January 2013 Kogi military convoy ambush claim. 20 Therefore, Ansaru’s Bauchi kidnapping indicated Khalid al-Barnawi’s operational and media influence more than that of Gombe, as if al-Barnawi’s renewed involvement in Nigeria and Cameroon by January 2013 resulted in his obtaining more leadership authority than Gombe and his contributing to the Kogi ambush and Bauchi kidnapping. One jihadist media activist, Qurrat Uyun al-Muwahhidin,21 who previously supported al-Qaeda’s Syria-based affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra (Front of Supporters), tweeted news about the Bauchi kidnapping.22 Al-Muwahhidin further demonstrated inside knowledge of Iraqi Kurdish jihadists when in June 2013 he claimed their group was “infiltrated” after they (wrongly, in his view) criticized ISI days before ISI rebranded as ISIS and declared the intention to fight Jabhat al-Nusra.23 ISI had disobeyed Aymen al-Zawahiri’s orders to remain in Iraq and allow Jabhat al-Nusra to operate exclusively in

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Syria. Therefore, al-Muwahhidin was siding with ISIS in its growing rivalry with al-Qaeda and Jabhat al-Nusra and, like Muawiyah al-Qahtani, expanding his jihadist worldview to Nigeria and Cameroon. This presaged IS’s declaring a global caliphate in 2014 and jihadist media activists’ coordinating Boko Haram’s becoming ISWAP in 2015. Al-Muwahhidin’s interest in Iraqi Kurdish jihadists and Ansaru’s Bauchi kidnapping could explain why the minor jihadist web forum with a Malaysia-hosted server, Sanam al-Islam (Peak of Islam),24 which distributed statements from the Iraqi Kurdish jihadists, released Ansaru’s March 2013 video and accompanying written statement from Gombe (as Abu Usama alAnsari) claiming the killing of the seven “Christian foreigners” in retaliation for alleged British rescue operations.25 Sanam al-Islam, and no longer the Desert Herald, thereafter became Ansaru’s media distributor in 2013. However, if not through al-Muwahhidin, then Sanam al-Islam’s contact with Ansaru might have begun with Sanam al-Islam’s newfound interest in Mali. Sanam al-Islam released, for example, Katibat al-Mulathamin’s first ever written statement in June 2012, despite the group’s otherwise using Mauritanian media agencies and Al Jazeera; a January 2013 Ansar al-Din video from Timbuktu of Oumar Hamaha, whose Tuareg fluency enabled him to operate between MUJWA and Ansar al-Din and eventually establish his own Timbuktu-based brigade called Ansar al-Sharia (Supporters of Sharia) before his 2014 death; and several other Mali-related jihadist materials in January 2013.26 Jihadist media activists close to Belmokhtar or Hamaha, therefore, could have recommended Sanam al-Islam upgrade Ansaru’s messaging from the locally styled Desert Herald, which could “spin” Ansaru statements, to global jihadist–styled Sanam al-Islam. This would be the case especially if Belmokhtar or MUJWA were already involved in promoting Boko Haram’s November 29, 2012, Shekau video and if Belmokhtar supported Ansaru propaganda development at his Gao compound, where an Ansaru leaflet was found, or connected Ansaru to Ansar al-Mujahideen for Ansaru’s Kogi ambush claim.27 Moreover, Sanam al-Islam attempted to specialize in two niches. The first niche was promoting relatively marginal, but al-Qaeda-aligned, jihadists, including the Iraqi Kurdish jihadists in Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam), Katibat al-Mulathamin, and northern Lebanon-based Fatah alIslam.28 The second niche was promoting jihadist dissidents. This involved teaming with a Kurdish-language website to support al-Shabaab’s Abu Mansur al-Amriki before Ahmed Godane’s loyalists killed him in September 2013 for criticizing Godane’s excessive takfir.29 That killing coincided with Godane loyalists’ Shekau-like efforts to help kill late Bin Laden’s respected Somalia-based confidential secretary, Fadil Harun, who criticized Godane, and Abdullah Azzam’s own recruit to the Afghan jihad during a 1987 Virginia lecture, Ibrahim Haji Jama Mead (Ibrahim al-Afghani), who

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also fought with Aden Ayro and Mukhtar Robow in Afghanistan, became an al-Shabaab commander, and wrote a letter to al-Zawahiri criticizing Godane’s treatment of Abu Mansur al-Amriki.30 Sanam al-Islam subsequently condemned Godane’s killings of Abu Mansur al-Amriki and Ibrahim al-Afghani.31 Like Shekau once did to Mamman Nur, Godane’s threats also forced another critic, Mukhtar Robow, into jihad retirement in 2013.32 Ansaru, therefore, suited Sanam al-Islam’s two niches, especially vis-à-vis the major al-Qaeda affiliate, AQIM, and Shekau, whose excessive takfir Ansaru criticized. Sanam al-Islam subsequently issued four Arabic-language Ansaru messages after March 2013. The first, Ansaru’s April 2013 charter, was generic except for limitations on the emir’s powers, probably resulting from lessons learned from Shekau’s “abusing power.”33 The second was Ansaru’s May 2013 statement exculpating itself from killing innocent Muslims, albeit without explicitly naming Boko Haram; blaming the “Christian government” for “replacing religion with democracy” and “starting the war”; and requesting “grandsons” of Usman dan Fodio and Umar Tell to “arise.”34 The third was Ansaru’s September 2013 proof-of-life video of a French engineer working for French company Vergnet, who was kidnapped by thirty militants in Katsina in December 2012 near Niger’s border.35 Like Ansaru’s previous “human right” and “Muslim rights” discourses, Ansaru initially claimed in e-mails to journalists that this kidnapping avenged France’s “hijab ban . . . violating women’s rights” and France’s planned “attack on the Islamic State in northern Mali.”36 In the subsequent Sanam al-Islam-released proof-of-life video, Ansaru further demanded France “fulfill negotiation promises,” but in November 2013 the Frenchman escaped the Zaria, Kaduna compound where Ansaru captors held him.37 Lastly, the fourth was Ansaru’s belated November 2013 Eid al-Fitr statement condemning Boko Haram’s April 2013 and September 2013 Baga and Benisheikh “massacres,” which reflected Ansaru’s focus specifically on Borno for the first time, and not central Nigeria.38 Additionally, the statement ridiculed “the imam’s maniacal expressions” (ibarat hausiya),39 albeit without naming Shekau explicitly, and praised al-Qaeda leaders, including al-Zawahiri, AQIM’s Droukdel, al-Shabaab’s Godane, AQAP’s Nasir alWuhayshi, Jabhat al-Nusra’s Abu Muhammed al-Julani, ISIS’s Abubakar al-Baghdadi, and Belmokhtar.40 This exemplified how the rivalry between al-Qaeda and ISIS was not yet so pronounced, which meant Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS leaders could still be praised together and Ansaru could still release its statement through Sanam al-Islam, despite Sanam al-Islam’s pledging loyalty to al-Baghdadi in September 2013 in the name of jihadist unity.41 Moreover, the statement demonstrated Ansaru’s respect for Belmokhtar, whom jihadists otherwise rarely referenced among al-Qaeda’s leaders because he was not formally in al-Qaeda or AQIM. As discussed in

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Chapter 10, Belmokhtar’s group status was evolving from Katibat alMulathimin to al-Murabitun (Guardians of the Fortress) before November 2013, which explains why Ansaru’s statement appended no group affiliation only for Belmokhtar. These Ansaru messages demonstrated that Ansaru opposed Boko Haram, despite commanders like Khalid al-Barnawi engaging in taslim (reconciliation) with Shekau, and that Ansaru maintained contacts to minor global jihadist media, particularly Sanam al-Islam. In contrast, Boko Haram relied on Agence France-Presse journalists in Nigeria to release virtually all of Shekau’s videos after his November 29, 2012, video in the desert because Boko Haram’s communications with jihadists abroad were mostly severed after Operation Serval. One exception to Sanam al-Islam’s exclusively releasing Ansaru messages after March 2013, however, was Ansaru’s April 2013 e-mail to journalists alleging MEND threatened to attack mosques “to defend Christianity” and retaliate for Boko Haram’s church attacks. However, Ansaru reminded both MEND and Akhwat Akwop that Ansaru and “the entire Muslims” condemned Boko Haram’s church attacks and Ansaru would “react” if Christians attacked Muslims in Bauchi, southern Kaduna, or Plateau State, where Jos is located.42 This message reflected narratives of Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe. Unlike Boko Haram, AQIM-trained Nigerian jihadists who specialized in suicide car bombings on churches, or Kogi-based takfir-prone Salafis who killed Christians at churches, Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe’s focus was more on Muslim self-defense during clashes with Christians than offensive attacks on churches. The distinctly localized nature of this message may also explain why it was not suitable for Sanam al-Islam. This April 2013 Ansaru message also resembled a previous June 11, 2012, Ansaru statement to the Desert Herald, from Ansaru spokesman Abu Ja‘afar, which warned Akhwat Akwop against harming specifically “Fulani Muslims communities”; claimed Akhwat Akwop participated in 2011 election violence against Muslims; and recalled Christian Kaduna-born general Zamani Lekwot, who was sentenced to death for killing Muslims in ZangoKataf in 1992, although his sentence was commuted.43 Such Ansaru messaging further resembled Abu Qaqa’s January 5, 2012, anti–Akhwat Akwop and anti–Christian statement, mentioned in Chapter 8, which was released just weeks before Ansaru’s announcement of its founding that also included threats against Akhwat Akwop, MEND, and CAN.44 This demonstrated how some Shekau dissenters, including Abu Qaqa, who revealed his dissatisfaction with Shekau’s Kanuri favoritism when he was arrested, shared Ansaru’s ideology despite not defecting to Ansaru.45 However, Abu Qaqa, like other Kogi Ebiras, and Kabiru Sokoto,46 like other Hausa-Fulani Boko Haram preachers, may have both joined Ansaru if they had not been arrested near Ansaru’s Kaduna base and near Kogi in Abuja, respectively, at around the

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same time as Ansaru’s founding. This is also why ISWAP’s 2015 formation and Abu Musab’s ousting Shekau from ISWAP leadership in August 2016 empowered Nigerian jihadists from diverse states, while the weakened Shekau returned to leading his primarily Borno-born Kanuri fighters. In contrast to Ansaru’s Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe-inspired central Nigeria–oriented messaging about defending Muslims during clashes with Christians, which itself contrasted with Shekau’s more religious-based anti-Christianity messaging, commanders like Khalid al-Barnawi were more concerned with “far enemies,” especially kidnapping Westerners. This was reflected in Ansaru’s messages concerning France, Mali, and Afghanistan. Presumably al-Barnawi’s fighters, not Gombe, were also responsible for Ansaru’s initial international contacts to Sanam al-Islam through Belmokhtar, Hamaha, or other jihadist media activists, Ansaru’s Kogi ambush and the ambush’s claim on Ansar al-Mujahideen, and Ansaru’s kidnapping of the French engineer in Katsina, although that engineer’s initial kidnapping claim embodied both Gombe’s and al-Barnawi’s worldviews. Ansaru’s simultaneous central Nigeria–focused and international-oriented messaging epitomized the group’s dueling identities, however, and derived from Ansaru’s merging of Gombe’s central Nigeria–based theologians-turnedjihadists with Khalid al-Barnawi’s regionally experienced, operationally oriented, and al-Qaeda-loyal combatants. In addition to spokesman Abu Ja‘afar’s differences with Gombe, mentioned in Chapter 8, despite their both being focused on central Nigeria, the dueling identities between Gombe and Khalid al-Barnawi subjected Ansaru to internal divisions and reduced its ability to ward off external pressures from both the SSS and Shekau. Ansaru’s catch-all amalgamation of AQIMtrained, al-Qaeda-loyal, anti-Shekau, and central Nigeria-oriented jihadists from throughout Nigeria, including ones in southern Nigeria who never followed Muhammed Yusuf like Abu Nasir, proved to be less cohesive than Boko Haram.47 Boko Haram’s core fighters, including Kanuris from Borno, not only had the collective memory of Muhammed Yusuf and the July 2009 clashes, but also were ethnically and regionally unified and more locally embedded than Ansaru. Besides Muawiyah al-Qahtani and Qurrat Uyun al-Muwahhidin, a third Algerian jihadist poet and media activist, Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad, joined Twitter on November 28, 2012, perhaps only coincidentally one day before Shekau’s desert-based video’s release. Al-Hamad previously commented on jihadist affairs for, among other forums, Sanam al-Islam.48 Like al-Qahtani and al-Muwahhidin, al-Hamad also switched loyalty from alQaeda to ISIS in 2013 and supported IS after Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s June 2014 caliphate declaration, which led to ISIS’s rebranding as IS. Al-Hamad became Shekau’s greatest admirer in IS and was the IS media activist corresponding with Boko Haram’s Abu Musab–led media team in late 2014,

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mentioned in Chapter 6. Boko Haram’s communications with these jihadist media activists also facilitated Shekau’s own pledge to al-Baghdadi and Boko Haram’s rebranding as ISWAP in 2015. Financing Guerrilla Warfare The French family’s ransom alone made kidnappings become what Ahmed Salkida described as Boko Haram’s largest “war chest.”49 However, the ransom’s division between intermediaries meant Shekau was displeased with his allotment and later executed those cheating him, including Bana Banki. One intermediary was well-known, multilingual Cameroonian trafficker and Boko Haram “frontman” Abdalla Adamou (Alhaji Abdalla).50 His Cameroonian government contact was parliamentarian Abba Malla, whose department, Mayo-Sava, in Far North Region hosted Boko Haram training camps.51 Abba Malla was also considered Ali Modu Sheriff’s “right-hand man.”52 For example, after Sheriff’s 2012 arrest while returning overland from Chad to Borno through Far North Region, Cameroon for “sponsoring” Boko Haram, Malla called security agencies to secure Sheriff’s release.53 Abba Malla and Alhaji Abdalla’s relationship was facilitated by Malla’s son, Abdoulaye Malla, who was Abdalla’s “negotiation lieutenant” and vehicle-trafficking business partner.54 When Boko Haram began controlling Borno territories in 2013, the group transferred stolen vehicles to Abdoulaye, who also bribed Cameroonian officials to help Boko Haram members enter Cameroon and obtain Cameroonian identity cards.55 However, this was controversial because Shekau believed national identity cards indicated loyalty to national governments. Abdoulaye’s staff also changed vehicles’ registration to Cameroon and sold them through Abdalla. This is how Abdoulaye and his assistant earned reputations for “princely” lifestyles despite lacking formal employment before their 2014 arrests. 56 While neither Alhaji Abdalla nor Abdoulaye Malla was a formal Boko Haram member, their “businessmen” roles resembled the roles of the organizer of AQIM’s kidnapping in Nouadhibou, Mauritania in 2009, Omar al-Sahrawi, and AQIM’s mediator, Moustapha Limam Chafi, by providing Boko Haram negotiation and trafficking support in Cameroon. France and Cameroon also developed contacts to Boko Haram after receiving advice from Zanna Mustapha, a lawyer in Maiduguri who represented Boko Haram families who lost relatives and property in the July 2009 clashes. As early as 1993, Mustapha represented the political party of Yoruba Muslim Moshood Abiola, whose presidential victory was annulled by northerner Ibrahim Babangida, before the coup that ousted Babangida and brought the Kanuri general from Kano, Sani Abacha, to power until Abacha’s 1998 death and Nigeria’s return to civilian rule. 57 Mustapha

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advised the French and Cameroonian governments that sought the French family’s release to contact Bana Banki and Muhammed Yusuf’s former driver, Ba Gomna, who became Boko Haram’s “chief smuggler” between Borno, Cameroon, and reportedly Libya.58 Bana Banki demanded not only ransom for the French family’s release, but also Chad’s release of late Muhammed Yusuf’s imprisoned follower, Kabiru Banki, who fled to N’Djamena after the July 2009 clashes. Chad, therefore, released Kabiru Banki, who received stipends to live in Benin after Nigeria opposed his repatriation.59 He then joined what Ahmed Salkida described as “noncombatant or inactive members who contribute proceeds from their businesses all over Africa,” if not also Gulf countries, to Boko Haram, through, for example, fake charitable organizations or black market import-export businesses, like Alhaji Abdalla’s.60 Boko Haram’s funding and logistics networks in African countries like Benin explain why the group’s first suicide bomber ran businesses in Benin and Dubai and supplied arms to the group before his Federal Police headquarters operation in Abuja. Another noncombatant funder, Aminu TashenIlmi, was arrested running his vehicle-stealing business in Kaduna after July 2009. When released, possibly through bribes, he reportedly moved to Qatar but maintained Boko Haram ties.61 He may also have cooperated with Ba Gomna or Alhaji Abdalla because they were also vehicle traffickers, and Abdalla’s assistant was holding hotel receipts and airplane itineraries for Libya and Qatar when Abdalla’s operatives assassinated him in Maroua in 2013.62 Abdalla feared he was an informant. Mamman Nur and another Yusuf deputy at least temporarily “retired” from jihad, as implied in the 2011 shura letter to AQIM’s Abdullah alShinqiti, and reportedly traveled to Sudan to escape Shekau’s ruthlessness.63 Nur’s relationships with AQIM and al-Shabaab before 2011 and reportedly with Jabhat al-Nusra supporters in Sudan during his “retirement” afforded him legitimacy that Shekau perceived as threatening.64 Nur also reportedly conflicted with Shekau over whether Muhammed Yusuf’s brother-in-law could receive compensation, as mediated by former president Olusegun Obasanjo and Adamu Dibal, for Yusuf’s and Alhaji Baba Fugu Mohammed’s deaths. Shekau supported this, but Nur’s loyalist reportedly assassinated Yusuf’s brother-in-law in September 2011 because he was paid to inform on Boko Haram.65 Nur, therefore, never severed ties to Boko Haram from abroad and eventually rejoined Boko Haram under Shekau’s leadership after Shekau’s declaration of an “Islamic state” in Borno in 2014.66 According to Fulan Nasrullah, Khalid al-Barnawi also had “commercial interests” in Senegal for financing operations after his “merger” with Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe to form Ansaru. Al-Barnawi also “maintained strong links” to jihadists who arranged trainings in Mali for Ansaru and Shekau’s Boko Haram fighters, whom they “tried to woo” in 2012.67

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After Operation Serval, however, al-Barnawi financed his fighters’ “silent expansion” into northern Cameroon, which was unannounced because alBarnawi, unlike Shekau, preferred stealth, including avoiding frequent video releases. Once in Cameroon, al-Barnawi’s fighters collaborated with Boko Haram to conduct kidnappings-for-ransom in Boko Haram’s name per the al-Barnawi–Shekau reconciliation terms.68 Al-Barnawi’s Senegalese contacts might also explain how Senegalese jihadists were funded and facilitated to fight with Boko Haram in 2014, mentioned in the next chapter.69 Within the Lake Chad subregion, Boko Haram also developed supply lines to feed and arm fighters in camps in newly conquered Borno territories besides what they bought or pilfered. The group, for example, worked with businessmen who sent truckers from Niger to bypass Nigerian customs. However, this led to Boko Haram’s first attack in Diffa, Niger, when a well-known import-export businessman accused of cheating Boko Haram was assassinated in 2014.70 Similarly, Boko Haram sourced weapons from Chad or further abroad, including Libya and Sudan, through Cameroon to Borno, arranged by Alhaji Abdalla and Ba Gomna, among others.71 Protecting routes required the group to conduct its first attacks in Cameroon aside from kidnappings that commenced with the February 2013 French family operation. Boko Haram’s first nonkidnapping attack in Cameroon occurred two months after Shekau-signed leaflets with Boko Haram’s logo were dropped in Cameroon in March 2014 threatening keskes (vigilantes) and warning Cameroon that “we have not attacked you; do not attack us.”72 Afterward, in May 2014, Cameroon’s BIR arrested Alhaji Abdalla’s main weapons trafficker, Alhaji Moustapha, for storing weapons in a Kousseri depot near Cameroon’s border with Chad. Alhaji Moustapha was imprisoned in gendarmerie barracks, but Cameroon assumed he was an ordinary trafficker and was unprepared when Abdalla ordered the operation that freed him. This led to the first two Cameroonian soldiers killed by Boko Haram.73 Boko Haram’s exercising of restraint in not attacking Cameroon until May 2014 and only after Shekau’s threats in the leaflets, despite having attacked Nigerian border towns throughout 2013, further demonstrated the group’s command-and-control capabilities, especially near Shekau’s Borno strongholds. The operation that freed Alhaji Moustapha also exposed linkages between Cameroonian politicians, Alhaji Abdalla, and Boko Haram. In September 2014, three militants who attacked the gendarmerie barracks were arrested at another Kousseri weapons depot. They then confessed to providing weapons to Fotokol’s mayor, Ramat Moussa.74 When Cameroonian security forces inspected Moussa’s home near Nigeria’s border, they reportedly found weapons stockpiled for Boko Haram.75 Besides Moussa and Abba Malla, other Cameroonian and Borno officials collaborated or communicated with Boko Haram, but not always out of sympathy for the group.

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Rather, they had financial incentives, were coerced by Boko Haram threats, or had relatives who were Yusuf’s followers and became fighters after his death.76 In one case, Borno South senator Ali Ndume attempted to contact Boko Haram to negotiate, but he ended up receiving threats from Usman alZawahiri, mentioned in Chapter 4, who was not actually a member.77 Boko Haram’s weapons depots along Nigerian, Cameroonian, and Chadian borderlands and Chad- and Sudan-sourced weapons, including replacement parts for sophisticated weaponry like tanks, indicated members in Chad contributed to the group’s arms acquisition. Thus, when Boko Haram’s Borno-born chief weapons trafficker in Chad, Bana Fanaye, was arrested in N’Djamena in 2015, there were arms stockpiles found under his home along with fake identification documents, Islamic books, and correspondences from Shekau.78 Northern Cameroon, meanwhile, became the site of four more Boko Haram international kidnapping-for-ransom operations after the French family operation, which all contributed to the group’s growing war chest, as discussed subsequently. Chad, Cameroon, and Niger, however, only became consistent battlegrounds from 2014 onward when Boko Haram defended its trafficking routes from these three countries’ military operations. Moreover, these three countries’ civilians were only consistently targeted with asymmetric attacks, especially female suicide bombings, when Boko Haram retaliated in 2015 for their subregional military interventions assisting Nigeria to retake territories that Boko Haram conquered in Borno. Boko Haram’s attacks in the Lake Chad subregion also demonstrated to IS that Boko Haram could become a “West Africa Province” beyond Nigeria. Conquering Rural Borno Besides Ansaru’s February 2013 kidnappings of the seven foreign engineers and French family, which represented newly introduced tactics in northeastern Nigeria and Cameroon, one other new tactic introduced into Borno concurrently was raiding military barracks. This tactic was unseen from July 2009 until March 3, 2013, when Monguno barracks were raided in Borno. Previously, sophisticated and specialized tactics, including suicide car bombings and kidnapping Western engineers, were conducted primarily by Ansaru, AQIM-trained, or formerly Mali-based militants but not Shekau’s loyalists. The Monguno raid was also sophisticated and specialized and bore hallmarks of those same Ansaru, AQIM-trained, or formerly Mali-based militants’ tactics and narratives. The Monguno raid’s occurrence after Operation Serval was also chronologically consistent with Nigerian fighters’ returning to Borno from Mali and launching barracks raids resembling Ansar al-Din’s and MUJWA’s barracks raids in Mali and AQIM’s in the Sahel before 2012. If the Monguno attackers returned from Mali, Monguno barracks would also be

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among the first barracks encountered when arriving southward through Niger to northern Borno. Because Monguno was never attacked before March 2013, the attackers were not from preexisting brigades harassing Monguno but presumably newly arrived from elsewhere. If those militants conducting the Monguno barracks raid were never in Mali or the Sahel, one must assume fighters only in Nigeria suddenly acquired sophistication, specialization, and motivation to attack military barracks coincidentally after jihadists dispersed from Mali following Operation Serval’s December 2012 launch and the February 2013 dispersal of jihadists from northern Mali. Alternatively, it would be consistent if barracks raids were introduced into Borno by fighters who returned from Mali and conducted new attack campaigns modeled on their Malian battle experiences. This would resemble how Tunisians who fled Mali when Operation Serval was launched joined AQIM’s new subgroup in Tunisia, Katibat Uqba Bin Nafi,79 and commenced new attack campaigns in Tunisia starting in December 2012.80 Similarly, former Mali-based MUJWA fighters eventually employed new tactics to open jihadist fronts in Burkina Faso, mentioned in the next chapter Like the French family’s kidnapping, the Monguno raid was claimed in an unbranded video featuring fifty uniformed fighters encircling weapons they claimed to have pilfered. Typical for what would be expected of Nigerian jihadists who were in Mali and similar to the commander in the first proof-of-life video of the French family, the Monguno raid commander spoke in Arabic and Hausa. However, he indicated his brigade’s name was Nasirudeen li-Ahl al-Jihad alal Kitab was-Sunna (Supporters of Religion for the Quran and Sunna) and not Boko Haram.81 Another fighter later accosted the commander and read an Arabic-language baya to Shekau from a script, indicating this brigade, like the French family’s kidnappers, was probably not Boko Haram but had contact with Boko Haram.82 Suggestive of MUJWA’s influence on this Monguno commander was his call to fight jihad “not for any sect (kungiyanci), town (gari), region (kasanci), or wealth (dukiya)” but “to promote the religion of Allah and Muslims.”83 Such antisectarianism reflected MUJWA’s founding ideology that remedied AQIM’s Algerian Arab-centric leaders’ marginalization of West African Arab commanders based on “sect,” “town,” or “region.” MUJWA, therefore, provided West African Arabs, and especially younger commanders, opportunities to obtain jihadist leadership positions while fighting in the name of non-Arab “Sahelian” causes, including restoring Umar Tell’s and Cheikhou Amadou’s legacies, to win local recruits. This is why MUJWA’s first sub-Saharan African brigade head from Niger, who once claimed Boko Haram arrived “en masse” to Mali, defected when he became disoriented by MUJWA’s administration of sharia in Gao and observed that sub-Saharan Africans were MUJWA’s recruitment targets, but were used by its leaders as

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“cannon fodder.”84 MUJWA’s commanders were, in fact, exclusively Arabs from Mauritania, including Hamadou Kheiry; Western Sahara, including Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi; and Mali, including Oumar Hamaha, Salah alDin85 brigade head Sultan Ould Bady, who was half-Tuareg and, like Tuaregspeaking Hamaha, operated closely with Ansar al-Din, and Osama bin Laden brigade head Ahmed al-Tilemsi, whose hometown, like Sultan Ould Bady’s, was near Gao and along key trafficking routes. Moreover, no founding MUJWA commanders ever realigned with AQIM, despite AQIM Sahara region emir Jemal Oukacha’s “working on removing the disagreement” with MUJWA. In contrast, although Oukacha initially described Tuareg-led Ansar al-Din as “adopting jihad” but being “too focused on the local dimension (al-ba‘ad al-mehli),” Ansar al-Din eventually merged with AQIM, and specifically Oukacha’s Sahara region fighters, as discussed in the next chapter.86 As a result, MUJWA represented the first attempt by non-Algerians to found their own jihadist group autonomous from, but not hostile to, AQIM after years of AQIM operations and recruitment in West Africa and AQIM’s geriatric, Algeria-based, and completely Algerian shura’s inability to empower non-Algerians, who were doing the bulk of the fighting by the early 2010s. Similar to MUJWA and the Monguno raid commander, Belmokhtarled Katibat al-Mulathamin’s first ever written statement released by Sanam al-Islam in June 2012 affirmed Katibat al-Mulathamin would never join “any jahili (pre-Islamic) conflict against political (siyassi), ethnic (‘arqee), or regional (jahuwee) factions” but only implement “true sharia.”87 This antisectarian narrative, which resembled the narrative promoted by then GSPC commander Hamadou Kheiry as early as 2004, was necessary for Belmokhtar to recruit Africans alienated by AQIM’s Algerian Arab leadership to Katibat al-Mulathamin’s pan-African subgroup Katibat Muwaqiun Bidima.88 MUJWA’s and Katibat al-Mulathamin’s recruitment efforts eventually contributed to their locally rooted Sahelian successor groups’ becoming embedded in the Sahel from 2015 onward, albeit with MUJWA’s tending toward IS and Katibat al-Mulathamin’s tending toward al-Qaeda. In addition, Katibat al-Mulathamin’s employment of a Nigerian “scout” in the January 2011 Niamey kidnapping may have been because Katibat alMulathamin was almost exclusively comprised of Algerians and Mauritanians. However, Belmokhtar needed to extend his reach to Niamey for what was then the southernmost operation in his career by recruiting Hausa speakers, including from Nigeria. Katibat Muwaqiun Bidima’s formation in December 2012 was also Belmokhtar’s way to manage the African foreign fighter influx to Mali in preceding months and to preserve Katibat al-Mulathamin specifically for Algerians and Mauritanians. Abu Ali al-Nayjiri’s self-identification as an Ansaru member in the May 2013 northern Niger bombings’ video claim indicated Katibat Muwaqiun Bidima was likely designed for North Africans or

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native Arab speakers while sub-Saharan Africans, including Nigerians like Abu Ali al-Nayjiri, who stumbled in his Arabic speech in that video, were allies, but not members.89 Ansaru was the group designed specifically for alQaeda-loyal Nigerians, while other sub-Saharan Africans could join MUJWA and be led by MUJWA’s West African Arab commanders. MUJWA, Katibat al-Mulathamin, and the Monguno raid commander, therefore, rhetorically, if not always in practice, de-emphasized tribalism and emphasized Islam’s unifying creed and departed from AQIM’s Algerian Arabcentric organizational hierarchies. Before the Monguno raid, in contrast, Boko Haram never referenced antisectarianism or pan–West African identity in its narratives, implying the Monguno commander was more ideologically aligned with MUJWA, Katibat al-Mulathimin, or Ansaru than Boko Haram. Ansaru, for example, also resisted Shekau’s provincial Borno and Kanuri favoritism and emphasized a more inclusive sub-Saharan “black African” (biladis Sudan) and broader pan–Fulani West African Muslim identity. The Monguno brigade never reannounced itself and represented Nigeria’s only jihadists ever using a name besides Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad or Ansaru. The brigade, therefore, may have comprised elite Nigerian fighters who entered Borno from Mali and subsequently merged with Boko Haram and continued to raid military barracks, which the Monguno commander threatened in the video. Shekau’s newly appointed spokesman after Abu Qaqa II’s September 2012 death, Abu Zinnira, also claimed the Monguno raid and refuted army claims to have repelled it.90 After Monguno, the next Boko Haram raid, on April 16, 2013, was fifty miles away in Baga, where military counterattacks contributed to hundreds of houses being burned in the town of 150,000 people and around 100 people were killed in crossfire.91 The conflict in northeastern Nigeria was thereafter recognized not only for terrorism and insurgency concerns but also for humanitarian emergencies, with thousands displaced and Nigeria unprepared for Boko Haram’s sudden shift to warfare in rural Borno. After Baga, Boko Haram attacked Bama on May 8, killing fifty-five people, freeing a hundred prisoners, and kidnapping more than ten wives and children of government officials. These hostages then appeared in a Boko Haram split-screen video in which Shekau claimed the Baga and Bama attacks, promising, “if they don’t release our wives and children, we won’t release theirs,” and blaming the military for Baga’s destruction.92 One reason Boko Haram constantly demanded Nigeria release group members’ wives from prison was that, like Ibrahim al-Zakzaky’s family’s detention two decades earlier, Shekau’s wife, Hassana Yakubu, was reportedly detained in Damatru in early 2012, and Shekau’s fourth wife, Afsat, was reportedly detained in Kano after Shekau fled the city (possibly to the Sahel) around April 2012.93 However, in June 2013, Hassana Yakubu, one of Muhammed Yusuf’s widows who reportedly also became Shekau’s wife,

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the wives of seven other commanders, and thirteen children, including three of Shekau’s, were released from detention and reconnected with their families in Yobe and Borno.94 The Bama women and children were then released. This implied cease-fires with Boko Haram were nonnegotiable by mid-2013, but hostage exchanges and ransoms were negotiable and the group was not “faceless,” like some Nigerian officials claimed.95 The Bama attack prompted President Jonathan to declare another State of Emergency and increase military personnel in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa. Concurrently, Maiduguri elders launched the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) with Maiduguri ward heads, who recruited youths armed with clubs and machetes to identify Boko Haram members in neighborhood searches. The CJTF uprooted Boko Haram from Maiduguri more effectively than security forces, which were known for alienating civilians by rounding up and executing Boko Haram suspects extrajudicially.96 Thus, the CJTF was targeted by Boko Haram threats, and Abu Zinnira promised retaliation in June 2013.97 Boko Haram began spying on the CJTF and attacking neighborhoods harboring the CJTF in Maiduguri and other Borno towns, including ambushing and killing twenty CTJF members in Monguno in September 2013.98 Meanwhile, the CJTF suffered internal crises resulting from abusing civilians and Boko Haram suspects, including women who were transporting weapons; illicitly selling items captured from Boko Haram; and disputing with officials over salaries, health insurance, and future employment guarantees.99 Although Boko Haram’s shift to rural Borno began in February 2013, the State of Emergency and CJTF’s emergence expedited the group’s withdrawal from Maiduguri toward Sambisa Forest camps. After conducting ten to twenty attacks in Maiduguri virtually every month from January 2012 until June 2013, the group conducted fewer than five attacks altogether in Maiduguri from July 2013 until the end of 2013.100 The first involved Boko Haram members’ wearing women’s clothing in a thwarted police station attack, which foreshadowed the group’s future deployment of women themselves as suicide bombers, and the fifth involved a December 2013 Maiduguri airbase raid. In leaflets dropped after that raid, Boko Haram again threatened the group would capture more women and children.101 Shekau also formally claimed the airbase raid in a Boko Haram split-screen video showing fighters burning military aircraft and a veiled commander beside pilfered weapons stating, “infidels prepare for us, but always lose,” and exhibiting accented, and likely non-native, Hausa speech that was “strikingly similar” to the Monguno raid commander’s.102 This indicated the Monguno raid and Maiduguri airbase commanders may have been the same person or both been from non-Hausa areas in the Lake Chad subregion, and that the Monguno brigade continued raiding hard targets in Borno but now in Boko Haram’s name.

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This airbase raid also demonstrated Boko Haram’s ability to launch attacks from Sambisa toward not only rural villages but also Maiduguri’s outskirts, as well as its ability to deploy dozens of fighters, including expendable foot soldiers, alongside experienced fighters in vehicles with mounted weapons. A Nigerian military analyst considered the Maiduguri airbase raid a “devastating, well-planned and well-executed operation,” but noted insufficient army intelligence and airbase protection contributed to the airbase’s fall.103 The airbase raid also presaged Boko Haram’s landmark March 2014 raid on Giwa (Elephant) barracks in Maiduguri’s outskirts that freed hundreds of prisoners captured by the CJTF and army, including women and children. Shekau claimed the raid in Boko Haram videos showing raid footage and mockingly referring to Giwa barracks as “pig’s barracks” and “rat’s barracks”; declaring “today our religion is nothing but killing”; and vowing to show the CJTF “my madness” and “personally behead you again and again!”104 The Nigerian military analyst stated militants featured in the Giwa raid footage resembled “non-Nigerian mercenaries” from the “Sahelian underworld” who employed similar tactics in theaters including Mali, Chad, and Sudan, where Khalid al-Barnawi’s Ansaru fighters reportedly gained battle experience.105 Some Boko Haram commanders in the Monguno barracks, Maiduguri airbase, and Giwa barracks raids may, therefore, have fought in those regional theaters, especially Mali, before joining Ansaru or cooperating with Boko Haram, or both. It is otherwise unlikely that Boko Haram members exclusively in Nigeria could have suddenly shifted from urban combat in northeastern Nigeria from 2010 until February 2013 to overpowering even unprepared Nigerian soldiers using entirely new raiding tactics at military installations in Borno multiple times from the March 2013 Monguno raid until the March 2014 Giwa raid. Moreover, Nigerian jihadists dispersed somewhere from Mali in 2013; some must have returned to Borno. Going Rogue Surrounding the Giwa barracks raid, Boko Haram conducted large-scale attacks targeting rural civilians, including killing around two hundred students in four massacres at Yobe boys’ school dormitories between July 2013 and November 2014, the first of which Shekau claimed he ordered in a Boko Haram video.106 Nearly a hundred people were also killed in two Konduga and Baga, Borno, mosque attacks where CJTF members worshipped.107 Other attacks were repelled, including a raid on Malumfatori barracks near Nigeria’s border with Niger and in Bama again in August 2013, but even those attacks allowed Boko Haram to learn and conduct similar attacks months later.108 Shekau also boastfully claimed attacks, including in an August 2013 split-screen video of Bama battle footage featuring destroyed

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tanks in which Shekau promised to “slaughter unbelievers like rams” and “face Obama, François Hollande, and Benjamin Netanyahu” because “Nigeria is no big deal.”109 With Ansaru’s moderate opposition to Shekau quashed and Boko Haram conquering territory, Shekau could drop pretenses of concern for civilians like in his January 26, 2012, and April 12, 2012, video monologues and expose his growing infatuation with brutality. Boko Haram’s barracks raids also forced Nigeria’s army to expend resources defending barracks, leaving rural villages exposed, including eventually Chibok in April 2014. Another major September 2013 Boko Haram attack on villagers involved 100 fighters in pickup trucks and two stolen tanks who entered Benisheikh, Borno, overpowered soldiers, looted shops, killed around 100 civilians, and beheaded ten CJTF members.110 One month later, the group advanced toward Damatru, Yobe, killing around thirty soldiers and releasing a split-screen video called “Battle of Damatru” with battle footage, nasheeds, and Shekau proclaiming, “I commanded the operation!”111 After Damatru, the group attacked Sandiya village, where Muhammed Ali and his followers were killed one decade earlier, and burned houses, stole cars, chanted “Allahu Akbar,” and killed twelve people accused of “collaborating with security men.”112 Less than one month later, the group’s attacks culminated in the Maiduguri airbase raid. Boko Haram’s September 2013 video in which Shekau claimed the Benisheikh attack epitomized his resemblance to Maitatsine. Sitting beside cheering fighters all wearing military fatigues, Shekau wiped his nose and grunted; engaged in fits of laughter; raised his speaking volume and then whispered; referred to himself in third person; called for Goodluck Jonathan, Queen Elizabeth, the late Margaret Thatcher, Netanyahu, Obama, and Hollande to “bury their heads in shame (haushi)”; and wildly chanted “She-ka-ka-ka-kau-kau-kauuuuu.”113 This hallmark Shekau ululation lacked Nigerian or Arab cultural roots, but highlighted how what nonmembers, including Ansaru and non-Nigerian Salafis, viewed as madness or “comedy” represented the mystique of Shekau’s appeal.114 Even some jihadist supporters on Twitter called Shekau “weird and strange,” although the most famous “ISIS fanboy,” “Shami Witness,” who turned out to be an office worker in Bangalore, India, demanded Shekau be “respected.”115 Other jihadist supporters simply recommended being “willing to listen” to Shekau because he explained himself in “the longest videos.”116 Boko Haram foot soldiers might have viewed Shekau as a jihadist, imam, tormentor, and father all in one whose survival and taunting of world leaders despite Nigerian officials’ claiming multiple times to have killed him meant that he, like Maitatsine, possessed “supernatural powers.”117 Like Maitatsine, Shekau also assigned nicknames to enemies, including Dan Iska (“airhead”) for the government amnesty delegation representative, whose initiatives Shekau lambasted, and Yan Kato da Gora (“stick figures”)

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for CJTF members. This cursing earned Maitatsine his own nickname— “the one who curses”—decades earlier when he delivered “curse-laden public speeches against the Nigerian state and apologists of the Muslim establishment,” especially JNI.118 While Shekau’s characteristics like parody were evident in pre-2009 sermons, either drugs or “highs” from conquests inspired his newfound ululations, wildness, and cursing, which became pronounced only in 2013. Shekau’s appeal also resembled Maitatsine’s because the latter’s followers came from “disinherited” youths in city outskirts like Bulumkutu, Maiduguri, while Shekau’s new recruits came from those same outskirts and economically neglected rural areas that Boko Haram conquered where young men sometimes joined either by force or for small payments or promises of “slaves” and spoils.119 However, Shekau was more rhetorically committed to the Quran and hadith than Maitatsine, while his watch-wearing, including in the Benisheikh video, differentiated him from Maitatsine’s prohibitions on Western items.120 Shekau was nevertheless reminiscent of Maitatsine in the post-9/11 era when al-Qaeda-inspired Salafi jihadism supplanted mahdism and Khomeinism as northern Nigeria’s prevailing antiestablishment revolutionary Islamic current and Izala supplanted JNI as the embodiment of the Muslim establishment. Furthermore, just as the content, if not the methods, of Maitatsine’s antiestablishment dawa resonated with Muslims of all classes, Shekau also was too eccentric and his methods too violent for virtually all Nigerian Muslims to support.121 However, some educated and integrated members of society who believed in the validity of Shekau’s underlying message must have also joined Boko Haram. Moreover, like 1970s Maitatsine and 1980s al-Zakzaky, Shekau’s castigating Nigerian and global elites was something only someone completely outside the system could do. This reflected how Shekau sought not to overthrow and become the establishment himself through revolution, let alone politics, but, like Maitatsine, to create an “alternative order” attracting discontented people.122 Shekau was also cognitively functional, including in the Benisheikh video, where he boastfully recounted statistics, albeit unverified, about spoils from multiple battles and demonstrated he followed current events by denying media reports about his receiving medical care in Cameroon. He further exhibited continuity with pre–July 2009 sermons by using heavily accented English to mock Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address when demanding “a government of the Allah, by the Allah, and for the Allah!” This resembled alZakzaky’s call for only “faith in Allah, His laws” in the 1980 Funtua Declaration, but with Shekau’s added parody. Shekau also summarized his speech in Kanuri in the Benisheikh video like Yusuf and he did in pre-2009 sermons and taunted Nigerian authorities by laughingly exclaiming, “With Yusuf’s murder, you thought this ended, but now you call me the extreme one!”123

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Considering Shekau’s ego and religious devotion, one might suspect he, like Maitatsine, would have declared himself not “the greatest imam,” as noted in the Shekau dissenters’ October 2011 letter to AQIM’s Abdullah alShinqiti, but a prophet if he lived before the 1980s.124 Accustomed to al-Qaeda ideologues’ composed videos, including those of al-Zawahiri and Abu Yahya al-Libi, Ansaru understandably ridiculed Shekau’s “maniacal expressions” in its November 2013 Eid al-Fitr statement also condemning Boko Haram’s Baga and Benisheikh “massacres.”125 However, Ansaru still exhibited dueling identities when that same month a French priest was kidnapped by twenty militants in Nguetchewe, northern Cameroon, near Borno’s border. The militants then called Agence FrancePresse and “confirmed the French priest is in the hands of the mujahideen” of Boko Haram and “the operation was coordinated with Ansaru.”126 Thus, in the same period that Ansaru’s theologically oriented faction ridiculed Shekau and condemned Boko Haram’s “massacres,” another operationally oriented faction probably including al-Barnawi’s kidnapping specialists coordinated with Boko Haram. In December 2013, Boko Haram exchanged the French priest for a multimillion-dollar ransom and Kanuri Cameroonian weapons trafficker.127 Consistent with Ansaru’s theologically oriented faction’s humanitarian discourses, and despite Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe’s July 2013 death, the kidnappers stated to Agence France-Presse they released the priest on “compassionate grounds having benefited from his medical expertise.”128 Because Boko Haram never made such humanitarian statements, this probably came from Ansaru members who cooperated with Boko Haram. Nevertheless, the result was that Boko Haram increased its war chest and its trafficking personnel in Cameroon. After the first two kidnappings in northern Cameroon involving the French family and French priest, there were three more kidnappings of foreigners in northern Cameroon in 2014. The third operation in Bana Banki’s hometown Tchéré involved two Italian priests and a Canadian nun kidnapped in April and released in June.129 The fourth operation in Waza involved ten Chinese engineers who were kidnapped in May and released in October alongside seventeen Cameroonians, including both a Cameroonian deputy prime minister’s wife and Kolofata’s mayor.130 These seventeen Cameroonians were kidnapped in Kolofata in July 2014 and reportedly taken to Abu Musab’s camp in Sambisa because the deputy prime minister never provided Boko Haram the full ransom for the French family in 2013.131 Thus, the multimillion-dollar ransom money exchanged for Boko Haram’s releasing the ten Chinese engineers and seventeen Cameroonians covered what Boko Haram and Alhaji Abdalla believed they were owed plus additional funds. The fifth and final operation in Adamawa State, Nigeria involved a German aid worker, who was kidnapped in July but

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brought across the border to Cameroon and released in January 2015 after Shekau claimed in a November 1, 2014, Boko Haram video that “the German man is crying and will be beheaded or shot.”132 From these kidnappings, Boko Haram obtained abundant war chest funds and traffickers who were released from Cameroonian prisons, including the three arrested at the Kousseri weapons depot in September 2014 who informed on Fotokol’s mayor.133 All negotiations also reportedly involved Alhaji Abdalla.134 This indicates the same network was behind all five kidnappings, and if Ansaru, AQIM-trained, or formerly Mali-based militants were involved in the French family’s and French priest’s kidnappings, then that same network was probably involved in the latter three kidnappings but possibly coordinating with the comparatively moderate Abu Musab’s loyalists in Boko Haram more than Shekau. Another series of kidnapping-for-ransom operations targeting government officials, including octogenarian former minister Ali Monguno, occurred throughout Borno from February to April 2013 and further expanded Boko Haram’s war chest, especially with a reported $300,000 ransom provided for Ali Monguno’s release.135 These operations coincided with Operation Serval’s dispersal of jihadists from Mali, the Monguno barracks raid, the French family’s kidnapping in Cameroon, and Ansaru’s kidnapping of seven engineers in Bauchi who were later killed in Sambisa. Therefore, these kidnappings in Borno, which reportedly involved Boko Haram’s new “Special Kidnapping Squad,” likely involved former Ansaru, AQIM-trained, or Mali-based militants who were cooperating with Boko Haram just like for the concurrent kidnappings of seven engineers in Bauchi and French family in northern Cameroon.136 Ansaru members also conducted bank robberies, especially after Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe’s July 2013 death when fighters drifted from Gombe’s ideologically driven founding mission and prioritized operational expediency, including those coordinating with Boko Haram and possibly also recruits from Kogi who were familiar with takfirism but otherwise lacked jihadist exposure and experience. This was mentioned in Abu Musab’s book in which he discussed Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi and Gombe’s separating from Shekau to form Ansaru. Although Abu Musab believed Ansaru was too lax by not opposing voting in elections, he still described Ansaru as being “influenced by al-Qaeda” and having “knowledgeable theologians,” but becoming weakened by “coveting luxury” through bank robberies and small-scale kidnappings, which he observed were facilitated by attacks at police checkpoints to create diversions, like the February 2013 Bauchi kidnapping.137 Abu Aisha similarly recalled that before Abubakar Kambar’s death Kambar also returned from Mali to Kano with money from AQIM to facilitate reconciliation between al-Barnawi and Shekau, but Kambar began stealing cars.138

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The future Ansaru founders who penned the October 2011 letter to AQIM’s Abdullah al-Shinqiti had asked about the permissibility of robbing banks and conducting kidnappings, to which al-Bulaydi responded in his treatise that robbing banks was permissible in jihad because Muslims were credited lost money. Al-Bulaydi referred kidnapping matters to Attiya, who approved them.139 Abu Aisha, however, noted Gombe originally rejected robbing banks because it was “wrong to use other people’s money for jihad,” but Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi convinced Gombe to tolerate bank robberies and remain with the group.140 From July 2011 until the end of 2013, there were around forty bank robberies attributed to Boko Haram in Nigeria, but many probably involved Ansaru or other Kogi-based militants like Mallam Mustapha’s student, mentioned in Chapter 8, who claimed to have robbed banks to raise money for bombings.141 According to Abu Musab, Ansaru militants exploited robbing banks to line their “bellies and pockets,” unlike, for example, Belmokhtar, whose criminality consistently served jihadist strategic objectives.142 Belmokhtar’s inability to advise Ansaru from 2013 onward may have contributed to Ansaru members’ going astray. Boko Haram also issued training videos from the Sambisa Forest in April 2013 featuring nasheeds about imprisonment, martyrdom, “soldiers of God,” and Shekau, and showing fighters shooting bull’s-eyes labeled “KANGUDLOK” (Goodluck’s head), “KANSAS” (Senator Ali [Modu] Sheriff’s head), “KANOBAMA” (Obama’s head), and “Al-KUFRU” (infidel), which reflected their perception of fighting jihad locally and globally.143 In one clip, Shekau also spoke about fighters’ impermissibly extorting money in Boko Haram’s name.144 This may have referred to former Ansaru members or militants like Mallam Mustapha’s student or Usman al-Zawahiri, who extorted wealthy people by claiming to be Boko Haram and threatening them. These training videos were released on the Ansar al-Mujahideen forum and included generic al-Qaeda, and especially al-Shabaab, promotional material despite virtually all other Boko Haram videos in 2013 featuring Nigeria-centric messages and being sent to media agencies, especially Agence France-Presse, which posted short clips on YouTube.145 This suggested al-Qaeda-connected commanders, and possibly Ansaru’s experienced fighters, trained Boko Haram after Shekau’s reconciliation with alBarnawi and Shekau’s relocation to Sambisa by March 2013. The trainers would have maintained al-Qaeda contacts that Boko Haram did not have for releasing the training videos on the Ansar al-Mujahideen forum. Although al-Andalus did not release these videos, its director, Abu Abdullah Ahmed, still referenced Boko Haram positively when fielding April 2013 online interview questions from, among others, Wall Street Journal reporter Drew Hinshaw. He reminded Hinshaw that Boko Haram’s “correct” name was Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad and that “we are one umma from Lagos to Jakarta.”146

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Arrested Boko Haram members further stated the group had Malian commanders in Sambisa, who may have been from Katibat al-Mulathamin or MUJWA and could have trained Boko Haram fighters in Sambisa and helped release the training videos.147 These training videos and Abu Abdullah Ahmed’s statement indicated that despite Shekau’s checkered history with AQIM, Boko Haram was ostracized neither by AQIM nor, as discussed subsequently, by Abu Iyad al-Tunisi,148 who was AQIM’s top-ranking Tunisian and on AQIM’s sharia committee. However, Boko Haram was also no longer dependent on AQIM for trainings in the Sahel because the group established its own camps in Sambisa, where it could self-train or train with Sahelian commanders and hold hostages, weapons, and supplies. Going More Rogue After commencing rural guerilla warfare in northeastern Nigeria and after Shekau contributed to dismantling Ansaru- and AQIM-trained cells, Boko Haram’s presence in central Nigeria waned in 2013. There were fewer than ten attacks in Sokoto, Kaduna, Plateau, Bauchi, and Niger states and Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, combined in 2013 and only two suicide bombings in Nigeria that entire year, while in Kano there were only thirty attacks and just two after May in 2013.149 Even large-scale attacks in central Nigeria and Kano in 2013 deviated from previous attack patterns that targeted government buildings, churches, and Westerners. For example, in January 2013, a militant in Kano calling himself Muhammed Marwana and possibly copying Maitatsine’s name (Muhammed Marwa) claimed he deposed Shekau and released a statement to Voice of America demanding negotiations with Nigeria’s government.150 This occurred at the same time that another self-proclaimed Shekau deputy, Abu Muhammed Abdulaziz, declared a cease-fire; asserted Mamman Nur supported him; and claimed negotiations were under way in Saudi Arabia with, among others, Bukar Abba Ibrahim, whose nephew was at Kanama camp, Muhammadu Buhari, and “Mama Boko Haram” and her lawyer husband.151 However, Shekau refuted Abdulaziz’s legitimacy and negotiations altogether in his March 1, 2013, forest-based video and in another undated video monologue, which was possibly intended for Boko Haram members internally.152 Months later Marwana provided Voice of America photos of himself in a room with explosives and claimed bombings in Kano’s Christian quarter on July 29, 2013, that killed forty civilians.153 Those bombings resembled unclaimed March 2013 motor park bombings in Kano’s Christian quarter that killed around twenty-five civilians.154 These two attacks differed from previous bombings in central Nigeria and Kano that targeted churches but not densely populated Christian civilian areas. Marwana’s targeting in the July bombing, if not also the March bombing, and extorting the government

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typified militants conducting “rogue” attacks, operating outside Boko Haram’s command and control, and never proving substantial Boko Haram ties. Marwana may have been involved in other operations in Kano that were attributed to, but unclaimed by, Boko Haram, including targeting BUK’s church or polio vaccinators. Meanwhile, Abdulaziz may have been with Yusuf Islamic Brothers because, like that group, he desired a cease-fire in exchange for government compensation to the families of July 2009 Boko Haram victims and to rebuild the group’s mosques.155 Also like Yusuf Islamic Brothers, Abdulaziz may have been close to Ansaru. This is because he presented his initial negotiation demands in a November 2012 e-mail exclusively sent to the Ansaru-linked Desert Herald, which was otherwise a peripheral Nigerian media outlet.156 Alternatively, his demand for Ali Modu Sheriff’s arrest suggests he, like Usman al-Zawahiri, may have had former vigilante ties to Sheriff, but been summoned by Sheriff’s political rivals to tarnish Sheriff with allegations of sponsoring Boko Haram.157 Besides Marwana and Abdulaziz, other former Boko Haram members sought negotiations with Nigeria’s government and received guidance from “Mama Boko Haram” and Australian Anglican cleric, Stephen Davis, who years earlier advised Nigerian officials who were negotiating with Mujahid Dokubo-Asari’s militants in the Niger Delta. While in Nigeria in 2013, Davis learned some details about Ansaru, probably from Boko Haram members who were alienated by Shekau and seeking to “retire” from jihad, but not before attempting to negotiate surrender for money.158 One of the alleged Boko Haram members admitted he was Muhammed Yusuf’s follower in 2003, but then worked for Borno Radio Television by 2005, while another Fulani from Adamawa State who graduated from Bauchi’s Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University admitted to receiving payments for a “media campaign,” which involved Davis requesting he assert Sheriff was a “chief sponsor of the sect.”159 Nevertheless, like another self-proclaimed Boko Haram member, Danladi Ahmadu, calling himself Boko Haram’s “secretary-general” during the Chibok negotiations in 2014, Marwana, Abdulaziz, and Davis’s “clients” all exemplified “not real” Boko Haram members with whom Abdullahi Diyar claimed Nigerian authorities negotiated, mentioned in Chapter 4.160 Ahmed Salkida, for example, easily discounted Danladi Ahmadu’s credibility because the name “Danladi” was not an Islamic name but a Fulani name meaning “Born on Sunday,” which Boko Haram considered heretical.161 Zanna Mustapha further noted Danladi Ahmadu spoke in English and called the group “Boko Haram” whereas Mustapha recalled group members referring to themselves as “Ahlussunnah.”162 Danladi and others desiring negotiations may have formerly been in Boko Haram or followers of Muhammed Yusuf, but they all lacked the access to Shekau and his spokesmen that, for example, Ahmed Salkida and Zanna Mustapha uniquely maintained. More-

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over, high-level Nigerian government officials’ optimistic statements about negotiations with these alleged Boko Haram members exposed their being out of touch with the realities of the conflict. This did not mean there was no pressure on Shekau to negotiate from within Boko Haram. There was, for example, another Fulani from Adamawa, Abu Mansur al-Fulani al-Adamawi, who produced an Arabic- and Hausalanguage video in 2013 requesting Shekau negotiate a ceasefire (hudna) with Nigeria’s government to help free Boko Haram prisoners. The video also featured the famous Saudi-produced jihadist nasheed “Ummat al-Islam Bushra” and distinctly similar graphics and narratives to Boko Haram’s 2010 video nasheed that integrated Nigerian and international themes and Ansaru’s June 2012 English-language introductory video, indicating this video was authentically from a past or current Boko Haram or Ansaru member.163 The video also included multiple brutal scenes of Christians’ violence against Muslims in central Nigeria as well as images of the White House with minarets, Muhammed Yusuf, Abu Muhammed al-Maqdisi, Sulaiman al-Alwan, Gazabased Jund Ansar Allah leader Abu Nur al-Maqdisi, and Jamaat Tawhid walJihad Fi Filistin leader Abu Walid al-Maqdisi.164 Nevertheless, Shekau was serious when he promised no more negotiations after the failed attempt with Ibrahim Datti Ahmed and Abdullahi Diyar in 2012. By 2013, therefore, Shekau would only negotiate hostage exchanges. Other bombings in Abuja’s suburbs, including a Nyanya bus station and police checkpoint in April and May 2014, respectively, and a Wuse mall in June 2014, as well as another bombing in Jos in May 2014 killed over 250 civilians combined and were apparently Boko Haram–approved.165 Shekau, for example, claimed the April 2014 Nyanya bombing in a video stating the group was avenging Barack Obama’s killing Muslims in the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham [Syria], Afghanistan, Chechnya, Plateau State, and, oddly, Azerbaijan.166 He further claimed the June 2014 Wuse bombing in a video standing beside three tanks and ten fighters and shooting into the air like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi famously did in 2006.167 The April 2014 Nyanya claim was significant because the operation was allegedly masterminded by a Britain-educated Nigerian in Sudan, Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche, whose father was a retired army colonel from Kogi.168 Moreover, Shekau revived internationalist messaging in the video claim of that attack at a time coinciding with the period before Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s June 2014 caliphate declaration. Shekau’s June 2014 Wuse bombing claim was also significant because he additionally referenced a June 25, 2014, female suicide bombing near a Lagos refinery, which was the second female suicide bombing in Nigerian history after the first one occurred on June 8, 2014, at a Gombe checkpoint.169 Before the Lagos refinery bombing Shekau threatened “Jonathan’s town, the Niger Delta, where your refinery will be destroyed. . . . Our refinery is Allah” in a February 2014 video, and

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he threatened to attack refineries again in his March 2014 Giwa barracks video claim.170 These February and March 2014 videos, therefore, indicated Shekau’s advance knowledge of the impending Lagos refinery attack. However, in the June 2014 Wuse bombing video claim, Shekau only acknowledged “ordering” the Lagos refinery attack, but he did not mention the attacker’s gender.171 According to Abu Aisha, Shekau approved female suicide bombings before 2014 against the shura’s recommendation.172 However, not until the April 2014 Chibok kidnapping did Boko Haram begin launching female suicide bombings. Presumably only then did Shekau exploit Nigeria’s “Chibok trauma” and use girls as suicide bombers, despite not deploying Chibok girls themselves in attacks.173 The Chibok girls instead became Boko Haram’s “slaves,” “wives,” and barter. The continuation of Boko Haram’s female suicide bombings after 2014 with Shekau’s approval exemplified the group’s “going rogue.” Female suicide bombings were uniformly rejected by jihadists. However, even in exceptional cases the martyrdom, widowhood, or motherhood of, for example, Chechen “Black Widows,” female suicide bombers directed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, and Gazan female suicide bombers were celebrated posthumously to convey women’s despair and expose enemies’ evilness or, in al-Zarqawi’s case, shame men into action.174 Boko Haram, in contrast, never venerated, let alone even mentioned names of, female suicide bombers, and failed detonations revealed girls were often fighters’ daughters or traumatized, drugged, deceived, or abducted women unaware the vest under their garments would be remotely detonated.175 There were virtually no cases of captured female suicide bombers’ subsequently expressing desire for martyrdom, even though several female suicide bombings caused significant casualties and Boko Haram members’ wives positively recounted experiences in Sambisa camps after capture by the army.176 Because fourteen of the first eighteen female suicide bombings from June 8, 2014, until February 8, 2015, were far from Shekau’s Borno and Yobe strongholds, where the vast majority of overall Boko Haram attacks occurred at that time, and were instead in Gombe, Lagos, Kano, Bauchi, and Niger states, it appeared suicide bomb-making cells around central Nigeria that were no longer abiding by AQIM’s targeting guidance or exercising any discrimination organized the first series of female suicide bombings, which often targeted civilians at markets, universities, bank machines, and petrol stations.177 This reflected similar trends where Ansaru members formerly in central Nigeria were abandoning jihadist norms for other “rogue” causes, especially bank robbery, extortion, and petty criminality. After February 2015, a historically unprecedented several hundred more female suicide bombers were deployed as well as hundreds of male suicide bombers, but they were all in northeastern Nigeria or Lake Chad subregion borderlands in

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Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.178 This indicated female suicide bombing organizers formerly in central Nigeria relocated to Shekau’s strongholds where female suicide bombings continued with impunity and Shekau’s approval. One final rogue tactic that emerged in central Nigeria after 2013 was assassinating prominent Islamic scholars and traditional leaders. This tactic previously occurred primarily in Shekau’s Yobe and Borno strongholds and was previously unacceptable to AQIM-trained Nigerians and Ansaru leaders in central Nigeria, like Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe, who sought Islamic scholars’ support. However, in February 2014, Shaikh Albani and his wife and son were assassinated in Kaduna, and in July 2014, Sufi scholar Dahiru Bauchi and presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari escaped simultaneous assassination attempts in Kaduna where eighty-two civilians were killed collaterally.179 Shekau claimed Shaikh Albani’s assassination in his February 2014 video while standing on a tank, and he threatened in that video and in his June 2014 Wuse bombing claim video that he would assassinate, among other scholars and emirs, Izala’s “Boko Halal advocate, bastard [Yahaya] Jingir,” who succeeded Ismail Idris as Izala’s Jos faction leader after Idris’s death in 2000.180 Jingir also publicly congratulated Nigerian police for killing Muhammed Yusuf in 2009.181 Shekau was so thrilled with Shaikh Albani’s assassination that in his March 2014 Giwa barracks video claim, he again boasted, “I killed Albani and it was splashed in newspapers!”182 Boko Haram also followed through with targeting Jingir in a July 2015 bombing in Jos after Ramadan fast, but the bomb missed Jingir and killed forty civilians.183 Shekau’s February 2014 video appearance outdoors on a tank and again in the June 2014 Wuse bombing video claim with tanks indicated he was secure in territories Boko Haram conquered.184 In contrast, in the seven Boko Haram videos featuring Shekau from the April 2013 training videos until the December 2013 Maiduguri airbase video, Shekau was indoors and possibly in one place because the same carpet was visible in his May, August, September, and November 2013 videos.185 Moreover, Boko Haram clearly pilfered several tanks used both as props in Shekau’s videos and in the group’s attacks, including in Benisheikh in September 2013. Through “imposters” like Muhammed Marwana who claimed to represent Boko Haram and attacked civilians and Boko Haram’s female suicide bombings, assassinations of Islamic scholars, and Shekau video claims, the perception existed that Boko Haram was ubiquitous from Lagos to Borno. However, the attacks in central Nigeria and Kano in 2013–2014 were Boko Haram’s and imposters’ last gasps outside northeastern Nigeria. After a November 2015 ISWAP-claimed suicide bombing of an IMN Ashura procession moving from Kano to Zaria perhaps under IS’s sectarian influence, which resembled a previous suicide bombing of a Yobe Ashura procession one year earlier, there were virtually no more attacks outside northeastern

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Nigeria.186 The jihad from 2016 onward instead shifted almost entirely to Borno, Yobe, northern Adamawa, and Nigeria’s Lake Chad subregion borderlands where under IS influence the goal became securing a dawla and tamkin. Meanwhile, the army’s December 2015 clashes with the IMN that led to al-Zakzaky’s indefinite detention and the death of the Iran- and Sudan-educated former JTI member and Kano-based IMN head, Muhammad Turi, who survived ISWAP’s Kano bombing one month earlier, became the hot button security issue in northwestern Nigeria.187 Chibok, the Islamic State, and the Anti-Shekau Underground Boko Haram’s attacks were excessive not only for the remaining theologically minded Ansaru members but also for loyalists of late Muhammed Yusuf, who neither supported assassinating Shaikh Jaafar nor declared takfir on students of Western schools. Abu Mundhir al-Shinqiti also issued a fatwa after Boko Haram’s July 2013 Yobe dormitory massacre declaring killing students impermissible because they committed no crime. He argued those attacks damaged the mujahidin’s reputation and that burning schools when they were empty was preferable.188 Thus, jihadist scholars’ and faithful Yusuf loyalists’ concerns about Shekau’s leadership intensified. Abu Musab described in his book how after fighting in Maiduguri with “bleeding” and little progress toward tamkin, the group shifted from the “war of cities to entering [Sambisa] forest.” Abu Musab’s claim that he remained loyal to Shekau despite observing Shekau’s khawarij (rebellious outside the fold of Islam) doctrine was credible because Shekau was Yusuf’s legitimate successor and reportedly married one of Yusuf’s wives and helped raise Yusuf’s children (Abu Musab and his siblings). The turning point for Abu Musab, however, was the death of the last of Yusuf’s deputies, Abu Saad al-Bamawi, in the August 2013 Bama attack alongside al-Bamawi’s father, a Boko Haram preacher.189 Nigerian officials subsequently claimed al-Bamawi was Shekau’s deputy and “spearheaded” the Ali Monguno and French family kidnappings.190 This indicated al-Bamawi was sufficiently moderate like Yusuf to cooperate with Ansaru or AQIM-trained members conducting those kidnappings but still close enough to Shekau to represent Boko Haram’s side in the postreconciliation alliance. After al-Bamawi’s death, however, Abu Musab recalled that Shekau “replac[ed] the shura with his arbitrary opinion” and Boko Haram “committ[ed] massacres the tongue cannot even describe,” including in Madagali, Adamawa, where hundreds of youths were shot for not joining Boko Haram. Shekau further killed any commander “advising or condemning” him and spared only “Yusuf’s sons,” including Abu Musab and his brother, Abba al-Barnawi,191 who became “media officials and the connection” (al-tawasul) to IS.192

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Abu Musab noted Shekau and Shekau’s deputy, Man Chari,193 allowed brutalities because they believed all Nigerians born after Usman dan Fodio’s dawla were “raised in infidelity” and only Boko Haram members following Shekau’s 2014 declaration of an “Islamic state” in Borno were Muslims.194 Thus, anyone outside Boko Haram’s territories was an infidel and legitimate target. Abu Musab further claimed Shekau believed in the “multiplicity of imams,” which Shekau detailed in his 2017 book published by Boko Haram’s Wadi al-Bayan (Clear Statement) media agency.195 This suggests why Shekau eventually considered himself a Borno-based “Islamic state” leader while also recognizing al-Baghdadi’s caliphacy. Abu Musab finally obtained relief with al-Baghdadi’s June 2014 caliphate declaration from a historic Mosul, Iraq, mosque. This presented opportunities for sidelining Shekau if commanders united around allegiance to al-Baghdadi and IS designated someone other than Shekau to eventually lead Boko Haram’s IS-affiliated successor group, which became ISWAP. Shekau was obviously inspired by ISIS before al-Baghdadi’s caliphate declaration. For example, Shekau lauded ISIS in his April 2014 Nyanya bombing claim, and in his May 5, 2014, video claim of the April 14 Chibok kidnapping he shot a gun mounted on a pickup truck and chanted ISIS’s distinct slogan, dawlat al-Islam qamat, dawlat al-Islam baqiya (the Islamic state is established, the Islamic state remains).196 In that video, Shekau further declared his “brothers are al-Zarqawi, Abu Yahya al-Libi, and the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham [Syria]” and justified the Chibok kidnapping on grounds that “Muslims never differed about the permissibility” of slavery historically. He further manifested narcissism and mockery of George W. Bush’s “with us or against us” rhetoric by stating he was “the president of Islam” and “you’re either with us real Muslims or you’re with Obama, Hollande, George Bush, Clinton, I forget not Abraham Lincoln!”197 The Chibok operation bore Ansaru’s hallmarks because it was a massive kidnapping operation, and for the first time Shekau mentioned he was “together” with Usman dan Fodio in the May 5 video claim.198 Former Ansaru members’ reconciling with Shekau and reintegrating into Boko Haram might have resulted in their introducing not only kidnapping expertise to Boko Haram but also media narratives about Dan Fodio for Shekau’s printed scripts, including in the May 5 video claim.199 While the kidnapping’s original purpose was allegedly stealing school appliances, the fighters already knew Shekau would approve enslaving the approximately 230 predominantly Christian Chibok schoolgirls. Boko Haram, for example, often threatened to kidnap women and Shekau claimed the May 2013 Bama women’s kidnapping before those women and their children were successfully exchanged for Boko Haram members’ wives and children. Moreover, Shekau foretold the Chibok kidnapping in his March 2014 Giwa barracks video claim when he stated, “Western education is totally prohibited. . . .

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Girls, return to your homes. . . . In Islam, it is permissible to take infidel women as slaves and soon we will start selling them in the market. Danger! Danger! Danger!”200 Shekau relished how his May 5 Chibok video claim made “the Chibok girls” the world’s top news story, including Michelle Obama’s May 7 Twitter post holding a #BringBackOurGirls sign and her May 10 official White House YouTube video highlighting the Chibok girls’ plight and Taliban assassination survivor Malala Yousafzai’s campaign promoting girls’ education globally.201 Barack Obama also promised to help Nigeria find the girls on May 7. Although effective military cooperation for rescue operations never materialized, Obama still recalled from retirement former deputy counselor for political affairs in Pakistan and ambassador to Angola and Bangladesh, Dan Mozena, to coordinate US subregional diplomatic efforts against Boko Haram.202 Before the Obamas’ May 7 and May 10 statements, from April 14 until Shekau’s May 5 video, the Chibok kidnapping was hardly mentioned in Nigerian or international media or even acknowledged by Nigerian officials, which demonstrated the impact of Shekau’s video.203 Therefore, on May 12, Boko Haram released Shekau’s second Chibok split-screen video claim with higher quality graphics than any previous Shekau video and scenes of around a hundred Chibok girls wearing hijab and being interviewed by a uniformed Boko Haram member, who was probably Shekau’s spokesman, Abu Zinnira.204 During Shekau’s monologue, he acknowledged “talk about Chibok, Chibok, Chibok” and promised to enslave Barack Obama and called Obama and “Clinton, George Bush, François Hollande, Vladimir Putin, and even small ones like [Goodluck] Jonathan” infidels. Shekau further claimed God “commanded us to capture” more slaves.205 Weeks later, in June 2014, three prominent pro-ISIS media activists, Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad, Muawiyah al-Qahtani, and Qurrat Uyun alMuwahhidin, led the pro-ISIS al-Battar Media Foundation (Muassasat alBattar al-‘Alami)’s Twitter campaign hijacking World Cup hashtags to promote ISIS days before al-Baghdadi’s caliphate declaration. However, these pro-ISIS media activists were only first developing contacts to Boko Haram at that time. In contrast, despite al-Qaeda supporters’ negative reactions to Chibok, Shekau was on the Rolodex of Tunisia’s top-ranked al-Qaeda member, Abu Iyad al-Tunisi, by July 2014.206 He was an Afghan jihad veteran and released from Tunisian prison in a post–Arab Spring amnesty. This enabled him to lead AQIM’s Tunisian dawa wing, Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia,207 whose members attacked the US embassy in Tunis before their Libyan counterparts did the same in Benghazi, as mentioned in Chapter 4, and supported Katibat Uqba Bin Nafi, which included Tunisians returning from Mali after Operation Serval and at least one Nigerian.208 Al-Tunisi wrote correspondence dated July 4, 2014, to al-Zawahiri but copied, among others, Shekau, and recommended al-Zawahiri pledge loyalty

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to al-Baghdadi for two reasons. First, it would tip IS’s ideological balance away from extremists (ahl al-ghalaw), including al-Baghdadi’s deputy, Abu Muhammed al-Adnani, and toward moderates (ahl al-kheir). Second, it would aid North African al-Qaeda leaders, specifically AQIM’s Droukdel, in maintaining fighters’ loyalty because young North African jihadists were tending toward al-Baghdadi.209 If al-Zawahiri joined IS, young jihadists would remain with al-Qaeda because al-Qaeda would merge with IS. Al-Tunisi eventually retracted his recommendation in a July 29, 2014, correspondence to al-Zawahiri after IS massacred Sunni Syrian Arab tribesmen for not pledging loyalty to al-Baghdadi, which caused other jihadist scholars, including Abu Mundhir al-Shinqiti, to withdraw his initial support for IS and be able to retain his status on Abu Muhammed al-Maqdisi’s website.210 However, al-Tunisi’s original correspondence excerpts were leaked online by the American former Jabhat al-Nusra member and later highranking IS jihadist media activist, Ahmad Abousamra,211 who obtained it and wanted to undermine al-Qaeda, whom he labeled “Jews of Jihad” for considering pledging loyalty to al-Baghdadi with ulterior motives.212 This forced al-Tunisi and two original correspondence recipients, Abu Muhammed alMaqdisi and Abu Qatada al-Filistini, to acknowledge the correspondence’s authenticity and publish both the entire correspondence and the retraction online because Abousamra “uncourageously” excised passages showing alTunisi’s genuine concern was Muslim unity.213 Only then was it revealed publicly that the original correspondence’s addressees included AQIM’s Droukdel, AQAP’s Nasir al-Wuhayshi, al-Shabaab’s Godane, Ansar al-Din’s Iyad ag Ghali, and Shekau. The most obvious way this correspondence from al-Tunisi could reach Shekau was through pro-IS media activist Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad. In July 2014 he contributed to Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia’s media wing, which in October 2014 evolved into Africa Media (Ifriqiya lil-‘Alam) and pledged loyalty to al-Baghdadi, like other jihadist media forums had already done, including Sanam al-Islam, al-Minbar al-‘Ilami al-Jihadi, and Shumukh alIslam.214 Before October 2014, however, al-Hamad and other Ansar alSharia in Tunisia media activists exploited Tunisia’s post–Arab Spring openness to use Tunisia as a base for communicating with al-Qaeda’s global network, despite al-Hamad’s being among jihadists al-Tunisi rightly feared tended toward IS. Al-Hamad even claimed in a March 2015 memoir and his tweets to have leveraged his al-Qaeda contacts to secretly promote IS from within al-Qaeda and that al-Tunisi failed to “win the mujahidin in Nigeria” to al-Qaeda.215 This may have referred to a reported March 2015 meeting in Derna, Libya involving Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s IS representatives, Abu Iyad al-Tunisi, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, and Boko Haram’s representatives in which Boko Haram and some Ansar Sharia in Tunisia members affirmed their coming pledge of loyalty to al-Baghdadi, but al-Tunisi and Belmokhtar rejected making the pledge.216 Furthermore, al-Hamad noted after al-Bagh-

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dadi’s June 2014 caliphate declaration he succeeded in contacting Boko Haram and was among pro-IS media activists, including also Australiabased Italian convert to Islam Musa Cerantonio, who admired Shekau’s defiance of al-Qaeda’s denouncements when he defended “enslaving” the Chibok girls.217 Supporting al-Hamad’s claim was that after June 2014, Boko Haram videos began featuring increasingly sophisticated prologues, graphics, media agency branding, and IS-style choreography. Assuming al-Hamad’s claim about contacting Boko Haram after alBaghdadi’s caliphate declaration was accurate, then al-Hamad could have conveyed al-Tunisi’s July 4, 2014, correspondence to Boko Haram. However, Abu Musab, and not Shekau, would have initially received the correspondence because Abu Musab and his brother were Boko Haram’s “connection to IS” and Abu Musab headed Boko Haram’s media team, sending al-Hamad reports by November 2014.218 Whether or not Abu Musab ever received al-Tunisi’s correspondence and provided it to Shekau, Abu Musab’s approach to Boko Haram’s pledging loyalty to al-Baghdadi indicated Abu Musab heeded al-Tunisi’s advice. This is because Abu Musab exploited Boko Haram’s pledge to al-Baghdadi to unite jihadists in Nigeria, moderate the newly formed ISWAP, and work within IS to sideline the “extremist” (ahl al-ghalaw) Shekau. Dirty War Brutalities Following conquests in Buni Yadi, Yobe, and Gamboru, Damboa, and Gwoza in Borno, and the assassination of Gwoza’s emir, Boko Haram released an August 25, 2014, video of fighters lined up behind Shekau, who declared for the first time Boko Haram’s territories were an “Islamic state” (dawlat al-Islam) and “state within the Islamic states” (dawla min dawal alIslam).219 The video then showed scenes of commanders with shovels beating to death CJTF members who attempted to flee Gwoza by wearing burqas, and shooting thirty CJTF members in the head before throwing them in ditches.220 The high-quality graphics in the video’s prologue also suggested new media professionals, probably from IS, were supporting Boko Haram media productions and Shekau’s “state within the Islamic states” mention reflected his belief in the “multiplicity of imams”: Shekau had one Islamic state and al-Baghdadi had the overarching Islamic state, or caliphate. Despite being inaccurately reported in Nigerian media as Shekau’s declaring “a caliphate,” his declaration in this video heralded that Boko Haram achieved tamkin and Muhammed Yusuf’s goal for a dawla.221 Other videos posted on Boko Haram’s official YouTube account, which was subsequently censored because of YouTube’s post–World Cup focus on eliminating jihadist content, revealed Man Chari’s implementing sharia punishments in the “Islamic state” (daular musulunci) and fighters in Bama

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shooting prisoners in their cells.222 They also claimed God instructed Prophet Muhammad to slay prisoners when there was no capacity to hold them.223 Another video showed fighters beating men with axes and large rocks before throwing them into a well.224 Like the GIA, Boko Haram also reportedly killed two civilians in Yobe for smoking cigarettes.225 Such scenes matched Abu Musab’s description of “massacres the tongue cannot even describe” when civilians, but not the CJTF, were brutalized. Boko Haram’s September 2014 attack in Bama also resulted in the group’s uncovering arms stockpiles so large the group returned with additional convoys to collect the weapons. However, Nigeria’s air force then bombed the armory and killed soldiers attempting to reoccupy the armory in friendly fire, but not before soldiers in a tank ran over Shaikh Jaafar’s reported assassin, Ibrahim Uquba al-Muhajir, despite the soldiers’ being unaware of his high rank.226 Boko Haram finally eulogized Ibrahim Uquba alMuhajir in a video in October 2019, which included the same photograph of him that Datty Assalafiy released one year earlier, alongside eulogies of, among others, Abu Saad al-Bamawi and Abu Fatima al-Salafi, who was the group’s general commander after the July 2009 clashes.227 He released a recording at that time promising “the Islamic State is coming at the hands of the mujahidin in Nigeria” and the “blood of our brothers in Borno, Bauchi, and rest of the land” will become “a volcano” for the “apostate tyrants.”228 Despite killing Ibrahim Uquba al-Muhajir, the military’s loss of territory and weapons to Boko Haram and its “bungled” counterattacks, including in Bama, depleted army morale when Boko Haram’s confidence was surging, and it was reflected in Shekau’s bombastic videos.229 By October 2014, Boko Haram territories incorporated parts of Borno, Yobe, and northern Adamawa, a level of tamkin IS eventually considered unique to “external provinces” in Libya and “West Africa.”230 Boko Haram administration revolved around tribunals where hundreds of men, women, and children were gathered and segregated by gender to watch implementation of sharia punishments. These involved whippings and stonings, including of women, and hand amputations and shootings of men for alleged crimes like aiding the CJTF or adultery.231 Such spectacles recalled pre-9/11 Talibanruled Afghanistan and demonstrated Boko Haram governed by “full sharia” and “cutting off wrists,” which mainstream Salafis abandoned. Nevertheless, hours of candid videos from Boko Haram’s media team, captured by Nigerian soldiers and provided to Voice of America, demonstrated in their daily lives that primarily Kanuri-speaking Boko Haram members amicably ate, recreated, and mediated disputes with civilians, which contrasted with the brutalities seen in Arabic- and Hausa-language official Boko Haram videos.232 Boko Haram also assigned names to conquered towns, including Dimashka (Damascus), Timbuktu, and Dar al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) for Kumshe, Alagarno, and Gwoza, Borno; Madinat al-Islam (City of Islam) for

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Mubi, Adamawa; and the Arabic surname Faruq for Buni Yadi, Yobe. However, Faruq was also the name of al-Qaeda’s best-known pre-9/11 training camp in Afghanistan where, among hundreds of others, Ibrahim Harun, AQAP’s Abu Nasir al-Wuhayshi, al-Shabaab’s Ibrahim al-Afghani, and Bin Laden’s confidential secretary Fadil Harun trained, the latter on break from studies in Karachi to which he never returned.233 Boko Haram also produced new Arabic nasheeds celebrating “conquests” instead of Hausa ones, perhaps because of growing immersion into the Arabic-dominated global jihadist movement.234 Several Boko Haram–branded videos also emerged from sharia tribunals, including one where Boko Haram’s hisba shot alleged drug dealers who sold “three thousand people” the snortable painkiller tramadol, which became epidemic in northern Nigeria and makes users feel “bursts of euphoria.”235 The hisba claimed, perhaps correctly, that tramadol made fighters kill indiscriminately.236 Its side effects might also explain Shekau’s erratic behavior and nose-wiping in the September 2013 Benisheikh claim video. Sharia tribunals also provided the hisba opportunities to recount the group’s history to audiences. In one tribunal, hisba officials explained how Muhammed Yusuf “sacrificed himself so we could establish an Islamic state” now under “the second leader,” Shekau, who was “feared by the West and the biggest threat to Nigeria.”237 This reflected how the image Shekau presented in videos was understood by fighters. Shekau also sent messengers from Sambisa to conquered towns to convey his sermons to sharia tribunal audiences, including about the impending pledge to al-Baghdadi, respecting parents, prayer, and not listening to imams who opposed Shekau.238 Some Boko Haram videos were apparently too brutal to be released publicly. One commander, Ali Midan al-Gamborawi (“from Gamboru”), for example, ordered fighters to tie the legs of captured police officers by rope to two trucks and then drive in opposite directions until the legs detached from the officers’ bodies and al-Gamborawi beheaded them while other police officers waited to be tortured next.239 Although that video was Boko Haram– branded and captured from arrested fighters and provided to a Cameroonian journalist, it was never published online.240 In another October 5, 2014, Boko Haram–branded video, a nasheed played in the background while al-Gamborawi and cofighters beheaded using a dull axe a Nigerian air force pilot whose plane was shot down near Maiduguri. Reminiscent of Shekau’s scripts and Salisu Wudil’s pre-2009 sermons, al-Gamborawi called “Jonathan, François Hollande, Barrack Obama . . . more evil than Satan” and demanded Nigeria write the shahada (Islamic testamony of faith) on its flag and “force Izala and Tariqa [Sufi orders]” to use it.241 This beheading video was released simultaneously with another Boko Haram–branded video of Shekau standing on a pickup truck and shooting a gun while the famous IS nasheed, “My Umma, Dawn Has Appeared,” played in the background. Shekau then claimed the group “chopped to pieces” the pilot and “we are in an Islamic

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state” (daular musulunci).242 This was Shekau’s clearest pro-IS signaling since the May 5 Chibok video claim and August 25 dawla declaration. Al-Gamborawi’s unorthodox killings even for jihadists resembled other Boko Haram commanders on the group’s territorial periphery, including former Adamawa-based hunter, Bulayaga, and Chibok-based Ibrahim Tada Nglayike, who were known for rogue jihadist practices like using amulets, which hunters commonly use, and abducting women, respectively.243 Commanders in communities along the Chibok-southern Borno-northern Adamawa-Mandara Mountain axis straddling the Nigeria-Cameroon border near Gwoza, which were exposed to Islam and especially Salafism only since the 1970s, may have been particularly brutal. Communities along that axis and into northern Cameroon also harbored mahdist legacies and were where Maitatsine, who was born a kirdi (pagan), and Usman dan Fodio’s great-grandson, who claimed being khalifa (successor) to Sudanese mahdi Muhammed Ahmad, hailed.244 However, in the 2000s, marginalized and recently converted Muslims from minority ethnicities along that axis who lacked “interaction with central governments” fought the establishment not with mahdist ideology but with mahdism’s “alternative style of renewal,” Wahhabism, based on Shekau’s interpretation.245 The same phenomenon might also have applied to ethnic Buduma (Yedina) Chadian Boko Haram fighters operating around Lake Chad, including those in an unbranded 2014 Buduma-language video showing the beheadings of three “Kanembuwa” (Kanuris) who allegedly were herdsmen and CJTF members passing through the “Islamic state.”246 Buduma communities adopted Islam only in the nineteenth century and were “weakly Islamized” into the 1960s.247 Nevertheless, despite their distance from Shekau’s Sambisa bases, even those Buduma Chadian fighters resembled Shekau by threatening “Goodluck Jonathan, Paul Biya, Idriss Déby, Obama, and François Hollande, and especially Déby,” the latter ostensibly being their president.248 Their replicating Shekau’s scripts like al-Gamborawi did also reflected how Shekau influenced Boko Haram’s organizational culture across the group’s territories. Certain killings epitomized Boko Haram’s interpreting Wahhabism. One Boko Haram–branded video, for example, showed forty uniformed fighters celebrating beheading captured police officers after reading them the verse from the Quran about Prophet Muhammad’s ascent to heaven and excerpts from the Wahhabi book on monotheism, Fathul Majid, which the fighters stated Yusuf and Shekau taught them and was “a reminder to all Muslim scholars, especially Izala.”249 This is also why Ahmed Salkida noted Yusuf “orchestrated the script” Shekau was playing in establishing a dawla governed under “full sharia.”250 Although Boko Haram’s brutalities exceeded what Yusuf might have imagined, they were not unrelated to Yusuf’s precedents. One recording

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from an arrested Boko Haram fighter’s mobile phone, for example, showed fighters interrogating an air force officer on Maiduguri’s outskirts who was pleading to be spared because he was in Izala. However, the fighters stated the officer “worshipped the state” by believing “politics is better than prayer,” referring to Abubakar Gumi’s 1980s quote, and there was “no option but Allah’s punishment.” They then beheaded the officer.251 This resembled Yusuf’s condemning “political jihad” and arguing “Allah says you should kill [Nigeria’s government and army],” mentioned in Chapter 6. Moreover, hours before Yusuf was slain, Ahmed Salkida witnessed Yusuf’s followers “slaughtering like a goat” a police officer who was pleading to be spared because he was Muslim.252 However, like the air force officer, that police officer was an “apostate” and not spared. This demonstrated that even those like Abu Musab opposing Shekau and reviving Yusuf’s legacy were capable of uncompromising violence and that Boko Haram’s ideological preparation for brutality preceded Yusuf’s death. Nevertheless, the lack of administrative documents to emerge from captured Boko Haram hideouts in 2014 or subsequent years implied the group never paid consistent salaries to fighters that would have required detailed record-keeping like IS did in Iraq and Syria and, to a lesser extent, Libya. Contrarily, according to Ahmed Salkida, the “only incentive” for the “at least 6,000” foot soldiers in ISWAP and Boko Haram by 2019 was obtaining “crumbs from fai” (wealth stolen from unbelievers). However, there were also ideological reasons for joining, including the “promise of paradise,” which commanders instilled in fighters during motivational speeches before battles.253 Arrested Boko Haram members also stated that gold stolen during village raids could sell for $15,000, while several hundreds of bags of fish from ISWAP-controlled Lake Chad shorelines could sell for $75,000 in local markets.254 Moreover, nonmembers who benefited from this “war economy” had incentive to at least passively support the jihadists, even though anyone who lacked “ideological or organizational affinity” was barred from the jihadists’ camps.255 Caffeinated kola nuts, for example, could be sold to groups of fighters for $3,000, which fighters may have used as stimulants in lieu of tramadol.256 Besides these financial benefits, the group “taxed” villagers’ farm produce and acquired millions of dollars from stealing thousands of cattle and from the kidnappings of foreigners in Cameroon, while also reportedly eventually receiving several millions of dollars from IS.257 All of this was exponentially more than “crumbs” or licit employment. Additionally, revenge for arrested, abused, or slain cofighters must have motivated Boko Haram members. The CJTF and Nigerian military, for example, were recorded beheading Boko Haram suspects and throwing them into ditches and castrating Boko Haram members after killing them. Cameroonian soldiers were likewise recorded shooting women and children suspected of

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supporting Boko Haram and cutting off a Boko Haram suspect’s leg and forcing him to bite it while still alive.258 Nevertheless, while CJTF and military abuses added to “contributory conditions” for victims’ joining Boko Haram along with other “deprived” or “ideologically compatible” people, sociological research of clandestine and cultish religious groups suggests unless victims had “pre-existing social networks” with Boko Haram during Muhammed Yusuf’s lifetime or around its camps and conquered towns after his death, they were unlikely to join, develop contacts to, or receive tazkiya from its highly clandestine members.259 Victims of CJTF and military abuses would also not necessarily respond by joining a jamaa qatiliya (fighting group) like Boko Haram; some Borno women, for example, instead formed the Knifar (“Success”) Movement to document and campaign against military abuses, including in IDP camps, and demand accountability for “disappeared” husbands and relatives.260 Furthermore, academic studies could not establish correlations between abuse of nonmembers and recruitment, particularly considering the inaccessibility and dangers in meeting and interviewing active members and methodological limitations when interviewing “presumed” former members in IDP camps or government detention centers, including the lack of corroboration of interviewees’ accounts and roles in the group; potential pressure on interviewees from security officers; power differentials, translation challenges, and contrasting secular and religious worldviews between interviewers and interviewees; and small and statistically unrepresentative sample sizes.261 Nevertheless, some combination of revenge, fai, ideology, and “interpersonal bonds” was sufficient for Boko Haram to raise the nonstate army that eventually became IS’s strongest external province.262 Preparing the Pledge Amid conquests and carnage, the final road to Shekau’s pledge to Abubakar al-Baghdadi began days after the October 5, 2014, al-Gamborawi and Shekau videos when IS’s flagship English-language magazine, Dabiq,263 featured an October 7 article called “The Revival of Slavery” referencing the Chibok kidnapping.264 Abu Musab recalled Dabiq got to Shekau’s head and made him believe he inspired IS to enslave Yazidi women in Iraq and Syria. This resulted in Shekau’s determining he must never be subject to IS orders except pertaining to media.265 Starting in November 2014 Boko Haram videos began regularly including IS signature nasheeds and choreographic techniques, including shooting captives in the head and throwing them off bridges like IS did to Iraqi soldiers in Tikrit; driving in convoys waving IS flags like IS did in Derna, Libya; and performing tank “wheelies” like IS did in al-Raqqa, Syria.266 Shekau also consistently reannounced Boko Haram’s “Islamic state,” including in a landmark November 10, 2014, video of him preaching in a Borno

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mosque, wearing attire and making gestures that resembled al-Baghdadi’s June 2014 caliphate declaration video.267 Captions in Boko Haram videos also used IS terminology, including “lions of Shekau’s army . . . breaking the borders with Cameroon,” similar to what IS claimed when it “broke” the Syria-Iraq border by bulldozing customs posts.268 However, Boko Haram videos still exhibited signs of Ansaru influence with captions for the first time in a Boko Haram video referencing establishing an “Islamic state in Biladis Sudan” (Black Africa), which was Ansaru’s claimed operational area.269 This implied former Ansaru members were coordinating with Boko Haram’s Abu Musab–led media team that became the “connection” to IS. Also beginning in November 2014, the Abu Musab–led media team began reporting to IS media activist Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad. Matters discussed included towns the group controlled in Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, and Gombe; “martyred” fighters, including “Muhammed Yusuf’s earliest students”; and harsh conditions of imprisoned group members who had to drink urine to survive.270 In addition, the group reported on reasons why fighters retreated from certain towns, efforts to “win hearts and minds” of civilians, and “administrative capability” deficits for which advice from IS “jihad experts” was requested.271 Demonstrating the media team’s perception of Boko Haram’s popular support, it claimed the air force pilot beheaded by Ali Midan al-Gamborawi was handed to fighters by villagers calling him “an infidel” after capturing him when his airplane crashed.272 In addition, although the media team acknowledged the group targeted some civilian areas, including a Maiduguri market on November 26, 2014, it stated this only occurred when CJTF members were present.273 Otherwise, the media team stated, Boko Haram avoided harming civilians, except for abducting women and killing men who refused to “repent for associating with unbelievers,” which made them equal to the CJTF and “Christian army.”274 The media team never mentioned, however, that two female suicide bombers conducted the November 26 Maiduguri market attack, possibly because Abu Musab never espoused that tactic and knew IS never did either.275 Even though the media team called Shekau “our imam,” those Maiduguri market attacks reflected tensions between Abu Musab and Shekau because only Shekau supported female suicide bombings. Tensions were also revealed by Boko Haram’s November 28, 2014, attack at Kano’s Great Mosque in which suicide bombers and gunmen killed nearly a hundred worshippers.276 Whereas Abu Musab’s media team disavowed those attacks in correspondence to al-Hamad, Shekau exalted them in what Belgium’s top jihadism studies expert described as “probably the weirdest jihadi video ever published.”277 The video featured Shekau calling Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, whose palace hosted the mosque, “the King of Money”; declaring Salafis, Shias, Sufis, other Muslim denominations, democracy, and Saudi Arabia as infidels; ululating an especially lengthy “Shekau-ShekauSheka-kau-ka-kau-ka-ka-kau-ka-ka-kauuu!”; and screaming, “We will kill,

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enslave, and behead” before shooting his gun wildly and throwing it.278 Despite Shekau’s histrionics, al-Hamad later wrote in his memoir that he admired Shekau’s ululations giving “nightmares to unbelievers,” shooting his gun wildly, and oversized miswak (teeth-cleaning twig mentioned in hadith).279 Ansaru, which abandoned the al-Baghdadi-loyal Sanam al-Islam, released on its new Twitter account a statement not only disavowing the Kano Great Mosque attack like the Abu Musab–led media team did, but also outright condemning the attack and offering “condolences” to “weak” Muslim victims.280 Ansaru was, therefore, more moderate than Abu Musab’s media team and certainly Shekau, despite Ansaru and Abu Musab’s media team both being sensitive about Muslim civilians’ deaths. Al-Hamad also inquired about the media team’s position on the IS– al-Qaeda conflict in Syria and Boko Haram’s position on pledging loyalty to al-Baghdadi. The media team originally replied it disliked “Syrian strife” (fitnat al-Sham) and Boko Haram’s “leadership was hesitant” (alqiyada mutaradada) about the pledge. 281 Despite al-Hamad’s claiming that latter response “pained my heart,” his Africa Media counterparts still launched a Twitter account called al-Urwa al-Wutqha (The Indissoluble Link) 282 for Boko Haram on January 18, 2015. 283 Less than two months later, Boko Haram became an official IS province with Shekau’s pledge posted on that Twitter account. Notes

1. Pflanz, “Briton ‘Kidnapped.’” 2. Federal High Court, “Between.” 3. Bwala, “18 Killed.” 4. Marama, “We Did Not Declare.” 5. For the March 1, 2013, video, see Zenn, “Boko Haram—All Videos from 2013.” 6. Mamu, “Another Islamic Sect.” 7. Nossiter, “New Threat.” 8. BH, “French Family Kidnapped.” 9. Ibid.; Cameroun24.net, “Cameroun.” 10. AQIM, “France and the Search,” 10:02, 23:30. 11. Seesemann, “Takfir Debate,” 73; ICG, “Cameroon,” 9; Seignobos, “Chronique,” 102; Guivinda, “‘Nouveau Chef.’” 12. Rodrigue, “Insécurité,” 13. 13. Strazzari, “Azawad,” 4. 14. Thiolay, “Djihad.” 15. Al-Awlaki, “Meaning of Gaza.” 16. Al-Qahtani, “Comment.” For al-Qahtani’s writings, see Zenn, “Muawiyah al-Qahtani— Collection.” 17. For the March 15 and March 18, 2013, French family videos, see Zenn, “Boko Haram—All Videos from 2013.” 18. BBC, “Nigeria’s Boko Haram Got $3m”; Vanguard, “French Family Kidnapped”; ICG, “Cameroon,” 16. 19. Desert Herald, “We Are in Custody.” 20. Ibid. 21. Referring to a book by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. 22. Al-Muwahhidin, Twitter, February 17, 2013. 23. Al-Muwahhidin, Twitter, May 25, 2013.

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24. Sanam al-Islam’s media arm was called al-Qabidun ala al-Jamr (Grippers of Embers). 25. The written statement appears to have been misdated and was signed by “Abu Muslim alAnsari,” perhaps also erroneously. Ansaru, “Killing Seven”; Ansaru, “Message to Crusader West.” 26. Katibat al-Mulathamin, “Statement by Brother Khalid”; Ansar al-Din, “Message”; see Zenn, “Sanam al-Islam.” 27. Staveland, “Ny Islamistgruppe.” 28. Zenn, “Sanam al-Islam.” 29. Muhajir, “Calling for Trial”; IWISC.net, “Answers,” 2. 30. Az-Zaylai, “Verily.” 31. Sanam al-Islam, “Abu al-Zubayr.” 32. Lahoud, “Beware of Imitators,” 96–97. 33. Ansaru, “Charter.” 34. Ansaru, “Innocence of Mujahideen.” 35. Ansaru, “Open Letter.” 36. BBC, “Islamist Group Ansaru.” 37. Ansaru, “Open Letter”; Vanguard, “French Hostage.” 38. Ansaru, “Eid Khutba.” 39. Ansaru’s writing in Arabic of ibarat hausiya without vowels means the term can translate to either “Hausa expressions” or “maniacal expressions.” This would provide Ansaru plausible deniability if it sought to disclaim calling Shekau “maniacal.” However, considering Ansaru’s reference in the statement to Surah Al-An‘am [6:112], Ansaru probably was analogizing the “maniacal” Shekau to an “enemy,” “satan,” “or jinn (demon)” who “deceives” people with “fanciful talk.” 40. Ansaru, “Eid Khutba.” 41. Sanam al-Islam, “Emir of Believers.” 42. The Recorder, “Ansaru Warns MEND.” 43. Desert Herald, “Jama’atu Ansarul.” 44. Nigerian Voice, “War Drums”; Ansaru, “Announcing Formation.” 45. The Nation, “Suspect Gives SSS.” 46. Kabiru Sokoto’s given name, Kabiru Abubakar Dikko, indicates he was Fulani because Dikko is a Fulani name. 47. Nasrullah, Twitter, August 16, 2019. 48. For Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad’s poetry, see Zenn, “Shaybah.” 49. Salkida, Twitter, November 1, 2014. 50. Mustapha interview. 51. Cameroun Online, “Bilan.” 52. A. Ibrahim, “How Ex-Governor Sheriff.” 53. Ibid. 54. Guivinda, “Dgre Libère”; CamerounWeb, “Révélations.” 55. Njiélé, “Policier”; Journal du Cameroun, “Inspecteur de Police”; FATF, “Terrorist Financing,” 15. 56. CamerounWeb, “Révélations”; Cameroon-info.net, “MP’s Son.” 57. M. S. Abubakar, “I Was Never.” 58. Nasrullah, “Survival and Expansion,” 21. 59. Mustapha interview. 60. Ibid.; Salkida, Twitter, November 1, 2014; FATF, “Terrorist Financing,” 15–16. 61. Anonymous journalist interviewing Tashen-Ilmi interview. 62. Amougou, “Boko Haram Connection.” 63. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 16; Pérouse de Montclos, “Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria,” 892. 64. Vanguard, “How Nur”; Nasrullah, “Survival and Expansion,” 21. 65. Sahara Reporters, “Curious Death.” 66. Shekau, “Declaring State Within.” 67. Nasrullah, “Can Senegal Bear the Costs.” 68. Ibid. 69. Nasrullah, Twitter, August 16, 2019. 70. ActuNiger, “Assassinate.” 71. FATF, “Terrorist Financing,” 23.

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72. Zenn, “Al-Urwha al-Wutqha—Leaflet.” 73. Gatama, “Cameroun.” 74. Journal du Cameroun, “Libération.” 75. Le Messager, “Fotokol Mayor.” 76. Idris, “Now, Senators.” 77. Premium Times, “Senator Ndume.” 78. Presidence.td, “Lutte.” 79. Uqba ibn Nafi was an Arab general who led seventh-century North African Muslim conquests. 80. Zelin, “Not Gonna Be Able,” 65. 81. SaharaTV, “Boko Haram Militants,” 0:13. 82. Ibid., 11:00. 83. Ibid., 5:30–5:45. 84. RFI, “Bilal Hicham”; Agence France-Presse, “Head of Mali Extremist.” 85. Twelfth century Kurdish conqueror of Jerusalem from the Crusaders. 86. Maaly, “Interview.” 87. Katibat al-Mulathamin, “Statement by Brother Khalid.” 88. GSPC, “Apostates’ Hell,” 1:25:20–1:26:50. 89. Katibat al-Mulathamin, “Epic Battles,” 30:25–31:00 90. Ogori, “Killing of 52 Members”; Marama, “We Did Not Declare.” 91. HRW, “Satellite-Based Damage Assessment.” 92. Agence France-Presse, “Nigeria Islamist Video.” 93. Daily Post, “Boko Haram Leader”; Nigerian Voice, “Shekau’s Wife.” 94. News24, “Wife of Boko Haram Leader.” 95. News24, “Jonathan.” 96. BBC, “Nigerian Youths Executed.” 97. Maina, “Boko Haram.” 98. Pieri and Zenn, “Under the Black Flag,” 13; Al Jazeera, “Boko Haram.” 99. Pieri and Hassan, “Rise and Risks.” 100. Zenn, “Author’s Data.” 101. Zenn, “Al-Urwha al-Wutqha—Leaflet”. 102. The pronunciation of Azurta, for example, was similar to the Monguno barracks raid commander and was not typical of native Hausa speakers; the word Kasanci used by the Monguno commander was also atypical of native Hausa speakers. BH, “Maiduguri Airbase”; SaharaTV, “Boko Haram Militants”; I. Ahmed discussion. 103. Vox Peccavi, “Op Restore.” 104. Shekau, “Maiduguri Raid.” 105. Vox Peccavi, “Northern Nigeria”; Nasrullah, Twitter, April 2, 2016. 106. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 312; For the July 14, 2013, video claim, see Zenn, “Boko Haram—All Videos from 2013.” 107. Premium Times, “Borno to Compensate”; BBC, “‘Boko Haram Islamists.’” 108. Idris, “32 Insurgents.” 109. For the August 12, 2013, video claim, see Zenn, “Boko Haram—All Videos from 2013.” 110. Idris and Sawab, “10 People Beheaded.” 111. Agence France-Presse, “Boko Haram Video.” 112. BBC, “Nigeria Raid.” 113. Shekau, “Benisheikh Attack.” 114. Zalunci, “Wannan.” For another Shekau ululation, see Shekau, “Beheading,” 12:00. 115. Shami Witness, Twitter, June 27, 2015. 116. Jahido, Twitter, January 21, 2015. 117. Kane, Muslim Modernity, 103. 118. Ibid. 119. Chirstelow, “Yan Tatsine,” 79. 120. Shekau, “Benisheikh Attack.” 121. Barkindo, “Islamism,” 98–99. 122. Chirstelow, “Yan Tatsine,” 80. 123. Shekau, “Benisheikh Attack.”

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124. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 13–14. 125. Ansaru, “Eid Khutba.” 126. France24, “Boko Haram ‘Holding.’” 127. Wanedam, “10 Millions.” 128. Straits Times, “Kidnapped French Priest.” 129. BBC, “Italian Priests.” 130. Journal du Cameroun, “Libération.” 131. Guivinda, “Dgre Libère”; ICG, “Cameroon,” 17. 132. Shekau, “Declaring Islamic State.” 133. Journal du Cameroun, “Libération.” 134. Guivinda, “Dgre Libère.” 135. Audu, “How Boko Haram Turned”; Premium Times, “Monguno Released.” 136. Audu, “How Boko Haram Turned.” 137. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 39. 138. Aisha interview, 2019. 139. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 43, 47. 140. Aisha interview, 2019. 141. Zenn, “Author’s Data”; Hanafi, “We Used Proceeds.” 142. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 39. 143. BH, “Ghanima,” 0:52–1:02, 44:44 (Part 3). 144. Ibid. (Part 1). 145. Zenn, “Boko Haram—All Videos from 2013.” 146. AQIM, “Answers to Media Interview,” 1. 147. NigerianArmyTV, “Better Safe,” 8:44. 148. Real name: Seifallah Ben Hassine. 149. Zenn, “Author’s Data.” 150. VOA, “Alamu.” 151. Legit.ng, “Boko Haram Ready.” 152. Marama, “We Did Not Declare”; Shekau, “Sabon Sako”; For the March 1, 2013, video, see Zenn, “Boko Haram—All Videos from 2013.” 153. Sahara Reporters, “Leader of Boko Haram Faction.” 154. BBC, “Kano Blast.” 155. Legit.ng, “Boko Haram Ready.” 156. Mamu, “Boko Haram Announces.” 157. Legit.ng, “Boko Haram Ready”; See also Idris, “Now, Senators.” 158. Odunsi, “Shekau Killed”; Nwabufo, “DSS Parades Seven.” 159. Nwabufo, “DSS Parades Seven.” 160. Sahara Reporters, “Boko Haram’s ‘Representative.’” 161. Ibid. 162. Idris, “Doubts over Identity.” 163. Al-Fulani, “Message to Imam Shekau”; BH, “We’re Not Boko Haram”; Ansaru, “Introduction” (English version). 164. Ibid.” 165. The Guardian, “Boko Haram Militants”; Adamczyk, “Explosions.” 166. Shekau, “Nyanya Bombing.” 167. Shekau, “Lagos and Wuse Bombings,” 1:15; Zenn, “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—Motifs.” 168. BBC, “Man Held.” 169. Premium Times, “Nigerian Military Foils Attack”; Dixon, “Nigeria Gas Depot Blast.” 170. Shekau, “Assassinating Shaykh Albani”; Shekau, “Maiduguri Raid.” 171. Shekau, “Lagos and Wuse Bombings.” 172. Aisha interview, 2019. 173. Pearson, “Wilayat Shahidat,” 38. 174. Al-Nusra Jihadist Forum, “Granddaughters.” 175. Pearson, “Wilayat Shahidat,” 43–44; Sahara Reporters, “Ex-Boko Haram Intelligence Chief.” 176. Oduah, “Women Who Love.” 177. Pearson, “Wilayat Shahidat,” 34–35. 178. Ibid.

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179. Vanguard, “Attack on Buhari.” 180. Shekau, “Assassinating Shaykh Albani”; Sahara Reporters, “Boko Haram Leader Claims.” 181. Tilde, “Muslims and Rule of Law.” 182. Shekau, “Maiduguri Raid.” 183. Adamczyk, “Explosions.” 184. Shekau, “Lagos and Wuse Bombings.” 185. Zenn, “Boko Haram—All Videos from 2013.” 186. This remained true as this book went to press. ISWAP, “30 Rafidha Killed”; BBC, “Nigeria Shias.” 187. BBC, “Suicide Attack Hits.” 188. Al-Shinqiti, “Advice.” 189. ISWAP, “Exposé Against Shekau,” 1:47; al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 41. 190. Premium Times, “Killed Boko Haram Commander.” 191. Alias: Abba Yazeed. 192. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 118. 193. Alias: Abu Sadiq al-Bamawi. 194. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 64. 195. Ibid., 61; Shekau, “Message on Meaning of Islam.” 196. Shekau, “Message to Umma.” 197. Ibid. 198. Ibid. 199. Ibid. 200. Shekau, “Maiduguri Raid.” 201. McIntee, “Bring Back Our Girls.” 202. Hudson, “U.S. to Help Nigeria.” 203. See “Chibok” in Google Trends. 204. Shekau, “Message About the Girls,” 24:56. 205. Ibid. 206. Al-Hidaya, “I Want His Life.” 207. The name Ansar al-Sharia was adopted by al-Qaeda dawa wings most prominently in Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen after the Arab Spring to enable al-Qaeda to integrate with populations and win public support without the stigma of the “al-Qaeda” name. It was suggested by, among others, Abu Mundhir al-Shinqiti. 208. Tunisia Ministry of Interior, “Katiba Uqba.” 209. Al-Hidaya, “I Want His Life.” 210. Al-Shinqiti, “Commenting.” 211. Aliases: Abu Sulayman al-Shami and Abu Maysarah al-Shami. IS, Rumiyah no. 8, 40–45. 212. Al-Shami, “Jews of Jihad.” 213. Al-Hidaya, “I Want His Life.” 214. Sanam al-Islam, “Emir of Believers”; Africa Media, “Statement.” 215. Africa Media, “Scattered Words,” 3. 216. Karam, “Libya.” See also Nasrullah, “August 5th 2015 SITREP.” 217. Africa Media, “Scattered Words,” 1, 4; Cerantonio, “Answers.” 218. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 118. 219. Shekau, “Declaring State Within,” 3:00, 10:40; ReliefWeb, “28 August 2014.” 220. Shekau, “Declaring State Within.” 221. Chasmar, “Boko Haram Leader.” 222. BH, “Haddi a Cikin”; Zenn, “Boko Haram—Series of Massacre.” 223. Zenn, “Boko Haram—Series of Massacre.” 224. Ibid. 225. Agence France-Presse, “Boko Haram Takes Over.” 226. Assalafiy, “Masu.” 227. BH, “No Glory Except Jihad,” 5:40–6:30. Abu Fatima al-Salafi is not to be confused with the Abu Fatimas in previous chapters or Abu Fatima al-Lagossi in Chapter 10. 228. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 36. 229. Ola, “Scores Killed.” 230. A.F. Al-Masri, “Message.”

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231. Pieri and Zenn, “Under the Black Flag,” 16–17. 232. Ibid. 233. Pulse, “Terrorists Rename”; VOA, “Boko Haram: Kashi”; Nasir, “Only 15”; US District Court v. Ibrahim, 966; Az-Zaylai, “Verily”; Lahoud, “Beware of Imitators,” 48–49. 234. BH, “Conquests.” 235. Sclar, “Snorting Tramadol.” 236. BH, “Executions.” 237. BH, “Imposing Limits.” 238. SashenVOAHausa, “Boko Haram.” 239. BH, “Al-Gamborawi Message.” 240. Gatama discussion. 241. BH, “Al-Gamborawi Beheading,” 9:20. 242. Shekau, “Beheading.” 243. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 474; Brock, “Boko Haram.” 244. Chirstelow, “Yan Tatsine,” 71; Njeuma, “Adamawa and Mahdism.” 245. Refworld.org, “Assessment for Kirdi”; Voll, “Wahhabism and Mahdism,” 119. 246. BH, “Chadian Faction”; Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 331–333. 247. Le Rouvreur, Sahéliens, 230–236. 248. BH, “Chadian Faction.” 249. BH, “Mobile Police.” 250. Salkida, Twitter, September 9, 2014. 251. SaharaTV, “How Boko Haram Members Decapitated.” 252. Salkida, “Genesis and Consequences.” 253. VOAZimbabwe, “Boko Haram”; Salkida, Twitter, April 29, 2019; ISWAP, “Part 2: Slay,” 11:35; BH, “Cameroonian Fighters,” 0:44. 254. FATF, “Terrorist Financing,” 11, 17. 255. Nasrullah, “Survival and Expansion,” 14. 256. Ibid., 17. 257. Ibid., 11–13. 258. Zenn, “Nigerian and Cameroon Militaries.” 259. Stark and Bainbridge, “Networks of Faith,” 1377–1379. 260. InterAction, “InterAction Protection Mission,” 4. 261. Thurston, Boko Haram, 182–183; Zenn, “Primer,” 74; Pérouse de Montclos, “Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria,” 879; Khalil, Twitter, January 6, 2020. 262. Stark and Bainbridge, “Networks of Faith,” 1377. 263. A Syrian town where IS believes the “Muslim army” will vanquish the “Romans.” 264. IS, Dabiq no. 4, 15. 265. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 56–57. 266. Zenn, “Boko Haram—Series of Massacre”; Shekau, “Mosque Sermon,” 24:00, 27:30. 267. Shekau, “Mosque Sermon,” 9:20, 10:05 12:25–2:30. 268. Ibid., 39:10; Zenn, “Islamic State—Abu Waheeb.” 269. Shekau, “Mosque Sermon,” 33:50. 270. Africa Media, “Communiques,” 17–18. 271. Ibid., 4–5. 272. Ibid., 17. 273. Ibid., 6. 274. Ibid., 15. 275. ABC.net.au, “Two Female Suicide Bombers.” 276. Blair, “Triple Bomb Blasts.” 277. Africa Media, “Communiques,” 6–7; Van Ostaeyen, Twitter, February 5, 2019. 278. Shekau, “Kano Emir Threats.” 279. Africa Media, “Scattered Words,” 3. 280. Ansaru, “Bombings.” 281. Africa Media, “Communiques,” 11–12; Africa Media, “Scattered Words,” 6. 282. A reference to a hadith about Prophet Muhammad and the Quran. Africa Media, “Scattered Words,” 6. 283. Africa Media, “Scattered Words,” 6; Africa Media, “Finally!”

10 The Islamic State in West Africa Province

Ever since Afghan mujahidin and GIA media activists in Britain started publishing newsletters, jihadists have recognized that informing supporters about their beliefs and battles from their perspective was crucial. After 9/11, al-Qaeda produced cutting-edge jihadist videos and magazines, such as AQAP’s Inspire, conveying leaders’ speeches and instructing followers how to conduct attacks independently. However, Khalid Shaikh Muhammed and the Iraqi predecessors of IS pioneered grisly videos, including the 2002 beheading in Pakistan of Jewish American Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, in retaliation for the US imprisoning alQaeda members in Guantanamo, and the 2004 beheading in Iraq of Jewish American contractor, Nick Berg, who was forced to wear a Guantanamostyle jumpsuit. Both beheading videos were also disseminated online. These beheading videos eventually surpassed the appeal of al-Qaeda leaders’ monologues and culminated with IS’s signature brutal videos one decade later. Boko Haram also underwent transition by shifting from Shekau’s 2012 video monologues, to 2013 split-screen videos featuring Shekau and battle scenes, to 2014 “documentaries” involving sharia tribunals and beheadings, and eventually beheading videos of captives wearing Guantanamo-style jumpsuits. After Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s June 2014 caliphate declaration, new generations of IS-loyal media activists also promoted IS’s videos through social media, especially Twitter, reaching audiences with “Hollywoodstyle” videos more effectively than ever before. Boko Haram long struggled with slow Internet connections, YouTube censorship, and media agencies’ publishing only clips of videos the group provided to journalists.1 However, IS exponentially improved Boko Haram media capabilities by assisting Abu

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Musab’s media team with graphics templates, techniques, and reportedly equipment before Shekau’s baya to al-Baghdadi.2 Boko Haram’s mediasavvy youths then experimented making “practice videos” of their daily lives with IS nasheeds playing in the background until Africa Media and Abu Musab’s media team launched Boko Haram’s Twitter account, al-Urwa al-Wutqha, on January 18, 2015.3 Tweeting the Pledge Al-Urwa al-Wutqha released tweets about Boko Haram attacks in Arabic, English, French, and Hausa and was promoted online by Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad.4 Its videos reintroduced Nigeria to IS followers just as AQIM, ISI, and al-Shabaab did in 2010.5 Commenters on al-Urwa alWutqha tweets were interested in Boko Haram because, according to alHamad, the group’s previously unsophisticated media dissemination methods, including sending videos to Agence France-Presse which released only short clips on YouTube, meant Shekau’s “pure” creed was largely unknown.6 For example, one self-identified Egyptian claiming to have fought in “Azawad” (northern Mali) commented after al-Urwa al-Wutqha’s first tweet that he learned from Katibat al-Mulathamin about Boko Haram’s “schisms” (inshiqaqat) and accusations of Shekau’s “excesses” (ghalaw) and inquired whether it was true. Others asked whether Boko Haram pledged loyalty to al-Baghdadi yet. 7 There were no responses, however, and al-Urwa al-Wutqha only tweeted that its “official spokesman” (almutahadith al-rasmi) would soon speak. Despite al-Hamad’s fondness for Shekau, al-Urwa al-Wutqha’s conspicuous nonmention of Shekau after its launch indicated he was excluded from the Twitter account. This was because Shekau’s faction was different from the Abu Musab–led media team faction managing al-Urwa al-Wutqha, despite their both representing Boko Haram (Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad). Tensions between Abu Musab and Shekau were revealed by their factions’ differing reactions to the November 2014 Kano Great Mosque attack and again after Boko Haram killed hundreds in a January 9, 2015, attack in Baga.8 Shekau lauded the Baga killings in Boko Haram’s January 22 video posted on YouTube, in which an Arabic nasheed about an “Islamic state” played in the background, children cheered Shekau, and Shekau screamed in English, “Nigeria is shit! The Constitution is shit! Islam and Islam!” before holding the black-and-white IS flag, burning Nigeria’s flag, and shooting his gun wildly.9 Shekau also alleged in heavily accented French that Radio France Internationale reported France was “fighting against Islam, Muslims, and terrorists” and mocked “Niger’s king,” referring to its president, for “paying condolences to Charlie’s grandson,” François Hollande, after the January 7, 2015, Charlie Hebdo attack.10

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In contrast, the first January 27 al-Urwa al-Wutqha video posted on the Twitter account featured IS’s nasheed, “My Umma, Dawn Has Appeared,” followed by an interview of Boko Haram’s “official spokesman,” Abu Musab, not lauding the killings but calmly explaining how the Baga attacks targeted CJTF members and anyone “repenting” was spared.11 Abu Musab, and thus al-Urwa al-Wutqha, represented moderation compared to Shekau just as Ansaru did previously. Abu Musab also described Lake Chad’s geopolitical significance, indicating a more strategic perspective than Shekau demonstrated.12 He also mentioned his media team reached people who lacked Internet access by dropping leaflets in conquered towns, representing continuity with Abu Khubab al-Nayjiri’s attempts to convey messages to “poor, weak Muslims,” discussed in Chapter 7.13 At that time, in 2010, Abu Musab at about age twenty might have been among original media team members and ascended to spokesman thereafter. Lastly, notable were the interviewer’s and Abu Musab’s face veils, Abu Musab’s claim of establishing an “Islamic state in Africa,” and al-Urwa alWutqha’s logo featuring an outline of the African continent.14 These resembled Ansaru because Ansaru leaders and the Sokoto-based kidnappers of the British and Italian hostages also wore face veils in videos and Ansaru claimed a “Black Africa” mandate. Al-Urwa al-Wutqha subsequently released photographs on the Twitter account of uniformed children labeled “cubs” (ishbal) who, like IS children, trained with rifles, and then a January 29, 2015, Boko Haram video and photostream of “Islamic State soldiers in West Africa” raiding Monguno barracks three days earlier.15 One “soldier” wearing Chadian army attire that was either his own, stolen, or purchased on the black market resembled MUJWA, Katibat al-Mulathamin, and especially the March 2013 Monguno barracks raid commander when he stated in heavily accented English, “we are not fighting because of money, tribalism, or democracy” but “just to do our sharia” and “not kill innocent people.”16 This distinct antisectarian messaging suggested the brigade conducting the March 2013 Monguno barracks raid repeated the same operation two years later. Additionally, the 2015 Monguno commander’s rhetoric, which resembled Abu Musab’s, indicated his brigade was aligned with the Abu Musab–led media team faction and alUrwa al-Wutqha, but not Shekau’s faction. Ansaru made a final attempt to assert its relevance by releasing on its Twitter account a January 29, 2015, video of fighters attacking a checkpoint on the Bauchi-Jos highway, which reportedly occurred on January 19, 2015.17 This indicated Ansaru maintained cells in Bauchi after the February 2013 kidnapping of the seven engineers and suggests why a commander involved in Ansaru’s 2012 Abuja prison break and 2013 Kogi military convoy ambush was reported killed when attacking a military convoy on that same Bauchi-Jos highway in 2014.18 Two other arrested Kogi-born Ansaru

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members also stated their cell leader was in Bauchi; the group’s weapons were acquired through attacking soldiers to steal arms; recruitment focused on family members, especially Ebiras; and funds were raised through family transport businesses, robbery, and kidnapping.19 Nevertheless, Ansaru’s January 29 video reaffirmed the group’s founding goals by featuring its fighters stating they differed from Boko Haram because they avoided harming civilians and sought to reinstate Usman dan Fodio’s caliphate and “wage jihad to liberate the weak.”20 Ansaru’s January 29 video’s messaging, therefore, was also similar to the Abu Musab–led media team managing al-Urwa al-Wutqha, including the 2015 Monguno raid commander. This further implied Khalid al-Barnawi’s fighters, Ansaru media activists, and any other Ansaru members who reconciled with Shekau would have tended to align with Abu Musab in Boko Haram, and not Shekau, because Abu Musab was more similar to Ansaru. Some former Ansaru members in Boko Haram also likely influenced the Abu Musab-led media team’s narratives when Boko Haram videos, including Shekau’s scripts and captions, began mentioning Usman dan Fodio and “Black Africa” in 2014. If former Ansaru members were involved in Boko Haram’s July 2014 kidnapping of seventeen Cameroonians in Kolofata, mentioned in Chapter 9, this would also explain why those hostages were brought to Abu Musab’s camp in Sambisa, despite Shekau’s being overall Boko Haram leader and having his own camp in Sambisa. Possibly because Ansaru lost Khalid al-Barnawi’s experienced fighters and media activists to Boko Haram’s Abu Musab-led media team faction, and because Ansaru needed to compete with Boko Haram’s recruits in Nigeria, Ansaru for the first time in its January 29 video declared it was “carrying out jihad in this part of Black Africa called Nigeria.”21 This resembled Boko Haram’s rhetoric, including in Boko Haram’s first video and written statement from Shekau in July 2010, Boko Haram’s November 29, 2012, Shekau video, and the commander’s speech in the French family’s proof-of-life video in February 2013. Combined with Ansaru’s condemnations of Boko Haram’s massacres in Baga and Benisheikh, Borno in 2013, this indicated by 2015 Ansaru dropped its internationalist messaging about, for example, Mali, France or Afghanistan because its internationally oriented fighters defected to the Abu Musab–led media team in Boko Haram. Remaining in Ansaru were theologically oriented heirs of late Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe alongside some highway robbery specialists, especially from Kogi, and their rhetorical focus was now Nigeria. However, Khalid al-Barnawi’s establishment of cells around northwestern Nigeria before his arrest in 2016 still provided his allies in Ansaru and ISWAP a lifeline in that region, as discussed subsequently. Ansaru’s January 29, 2015, video was released despite Ansaru’s having released no videos since the September 2013 proof-of-life video of the

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French engineer. This indicated Ansaru resurfaced on January 29, 2015 in response to Boko Haram’s impending pledge of loyalty to al-Baghdadi. The January 29 video also represented Ansaru’s last statement before Boko Haram held February 9 shura meetings to discuss the pledge to al-Baghdadi.22 Africa Media tweeted that day that Boko Haram’s shura was in “consultation and study” and results would emerge soon. The Abu Musab-led media team also reported to al-Hamad that Boko Haram would soon make the pledge to alBaghdadi and requested IS members make hijra to Nigeria “to help us in the administration of districts” (idarat al-minatiq), and to fight “the alliance of infidelity” (tahalif al-kufr).23 Ansaru presumably anticipated these shura meetings because former Ansaru members who cooperated with Boko Haram still shared information with Ansaru. This is why Ansaru not only released the preemptive January 29 video, but also released another February 9, 2015, video on its Twitter account to undermine Boko Haram just before Abu Musab and Shekau agreed to join IS on that same day.24 Ansaru’s February 9 video for the first time explicitly mocked Shekau by showing scenes of his crotch-scratching during the Kano Great Mosque attack video claim but still demonstrated Ansaru’s concern for civilians by showing other scenes of its fighters providing money to villagers in Mundu, Bauchi, including a “Hausa-Fulani tailor” who claimed the military “burned Muslims alive.”25 Mundu homes were razed on December 6, 2014 by Nigerian soldiers, who Ansaru claimed were searching for Ansaru members living “harmoniously” with villagers.26 Mundu villagers’ reports about “Boko Haram’s” camps two kilometers from Mundu village and fighters’ occasionally purchasing supplies at Mundu’s market, therefore, likely actually referred to Ansaru and contributed to the military’s razing Mundu and killing several villagers as collective punishment.27 Mundu’s location along the Bauchi-Jos highway also explains why that area became Ansaru’s focal point of attacks in 2014 and 2015, including the reported January 19, 2015, “retaliatory” Bauchi checkpoint attack launched by a “small cell of insurgents” who were driven from a forest base near the BauchiGombe border.28 While there was no indication Mundu villagers would join Ansaru or Boko Haram after their village was destroyed, such cases in Bauchi and elsewhere, especially Borno, would inevitably make villagers think twice about reporting on jihadists’ movements to the authorities, not to mention villagers’ avoiding informing the security forces about Boko Haram knowing it would lead to Boko Haram’s own retaliation against them. On February 9, Boko Haram also signaled Shekau’s agreement to pledge loyalty to al-Baghdadi when user Abu Zinnira, Shekau’s spokesman, posted two Boko Haram–branded videos on YouTube and user Islam Daula posted a third Boko Haram–branded video on YouTube, but all were still not posted to the Abu Musab–managed al-Urwa al-Wutqha Twitter account. This indicated Abu Musab’s and Shekau’s factions were not yet fully united.

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The video posted by Islam Daula featured Shekau with fighters in IS-style black uniforms threatening neighboring countries’ leaders, especially Chad’s President Déby, while the first video posted by Abu Zinnira featured fighters raiding Damatru in December 2014.29 The other video posted by Abu Zinnira featured sharia tribunals with hand amputations and stoning punishments in the “Islamic State in Africa” and historical Usman dan Fodio battle scenes transitioning into al-Baghdadi’s caliphate declaration.30 This reflected how Shekau now viewed Boko Haram’s “Islamic state” as reviving Dan Fodio’s dawla, which al-Zakzaky, JTI, and Abubakar Gumi promised but never achieved.31 While Shekau’s broad interpretation of takfir would have been unknown to Dan Fodio, the similarity between Dan Fodio and Shekau was their jihads both targeted Muslim rulers who did not strictly follow sharia and secondarily non-Muslims, such as pagans and Christians, respectively. Moreover, unlike AQIM’s Abdullah al-Shinqiti and Jemal Oukacha, Ansar al-Din’s Iyad ag Ghaly, and MUJWA fighters, as well as Kogi Salafis, who ordered Malian and Kogi Sufi shrines, respectively, to be destroyed, but similar to Muhammed Yusuf, Boko Haram and later ISWAP, including under Shekau’s leadership, never especially sought out Sufi shrines to destroy.32 Their vengeance was instead directed primarily toward Christian and Muslim rulers like Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari, independent Salafi scholars like Shaikh Albani and Isa Ali Pantami, and Izala scholars like Shaikh Jaafar and Yahaya Jingir, all of whom opposed jihad in Nigeria. After the February 9 shura meetings and video releases, on February 14, Arabic- and English-language communiqués featuring the logos of both alUrwa al-Wutqha and Boko Haram (Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad) were published on the al-Urwa al-Wutqha Twitter account announcing the formation of a General Command to repel the “Chad-led coalition” planning to oust Boko Haram from its territories before Nigeria’s February 14 elections.33 The General Command, with which al-Hamad claimed to have contact, represented the unification of the Abu Musab–led media team faction and Shekau’s faction of Boko Haram. Notably, although the Abu Musab–led media team faction managing al-Urwa al-Wutqha specialized in media, it still included fighters. For example, when Boko Haram fighters entered Gombe city on February 14 to disrupt elections, which were postponed last-minute due to security concerns, they dropped leaflets with “a message from Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad” warning against voting but with only alUrwa al-Wutqha’s logo on the leaflets.34 The fighters also took photographs that later appeared on the al-Urwa al-Wutqha Twitter account.35 Those fighters, therefore, were from the Abu Musab–led media team faction. Three days after forming the General Command, on February 17, Shekau for the first time appeared in a Boko Haram video on the al-Urwa al-Wutqha Twitter account because his agreement with Abu Musab to

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pledge loyalty to al-Baghdadi was in effect. Shekau emphasized subregional narratives by threatening Benin, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon and calling for reviving the “land of Usman bin Fodio” (his Arabized name).36 He also was uncharacteristically composed, albeit with his extra-large miswak teeth-cleaning twig. He evidently controlled himself to respect al-Urwa al-Wutqha, Africa Media, and IS media guidelines. Before Shekau’s March 7 pledge to al-Baghdadi, two more Boko Haram videos were released on the al-Urwa al-Wutqha Twitter account. The first, on February 22, featured fighters raiding military barracks and a narrator, like Abu Musab’s January 29 interview, discussing Borno’s “important economic resources.” It concluded by playing recordings from Muhammed Yusuf’s sermons about God “granting mujahidin victories over enemies.”37 Evidence that pro-IS al-Battar Media Foundation, whose activists included Muawiyah al-Qahtani and Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad, helped produce this February 22 video was that it featured a spinning globe magnifying Nigeria identical to a November 2014 al-Battar Media Foundation video magnifying Iraq.38 Those two videos also resembled the 2010 ISI video magnifying Nigeria, mentioned in Chapter 7, albeit the 2010 clip’s graphics were less sophisticated.39 Furthermore, al-Battar Media Foundation released its own March 26, 2015, video about Nigeria with clips from Boko Haram’s February 22 video.40 In al-Hamad’s own March 28, 2015, memoir, he even mentioned Muhammed Yusuf’s post-9/11 belief about the world being divided into two camps and Boko Haram’s having “faith without hypocrisy,” as if al-Hamad learned this from Abu Musab or from Abu Musab’s posting Yusuf’s sermons on the al-Urwa al-Wutqha Twitter account on March 3, 2015.41 Ansaru might well have attempted to match Boko Haram not only by renewing its focus on Nigeria but also by copying IS videography, including with Ansaru’s own globe magnifying Nigeria in its February 9 video. Like Abu Musab’s narratives, that Ansaru video also stated Nigeria was an “economically endowed country.”42 AQIM’s Sahara region fighters similarly responded to IS media sophistication by dressing like notorious British IS member “Jihadi John,” updating choreographic techniques to resemble IS, and adopting certain IS narratives, including about establishing a caliphate and conquering Rome.43 Even though Ansaru’s ties to AQIM weakened after 2013, both groups upgraded their media sophistication to compete with their IS rivals. Boko Haram’s next video on the al-Urwa al-Wutqha Twitter account, on March 2, featured distinct IS-style choreography and Arabic, English, and French subtitles corresponding to Hausa-speaking fighters’ interrogations of two CJTF members before the fighters, who wore IS-style uniforms, beheaded the CJTF members.44 Presumably, the CJTF members would have been killed if Boko Haram had no IS ties. However, because of IS media guidance, Boko Haram now conducted these killings using IS-style special

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effects, including, for example, escalating the sound of the victims’ breathing before their execution.45 This reflected that IS transmitted its own organizational culture, and eventually its identity, to Boko Haram, even if mostly virtually, especially when Guantanamo-style jumpsuits became staples in Boko Haram and ISWAP execution videos in 2017 and 2019, respectively.46 Shekau’s pledge was finally foretold by Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad’s tweet that “news will soon gladden believers’ hearts.” Shortly afterward, Shekau’s March 7 audio-recorded pledge of loyalty (baya) to al-Baghdadi in Arabic was posted on the al-Urwa al-Wutqha Twitter account with English and French subtitles.47 It conformed to IS’s script for pledges from “province” leaders ranging from Sinai to Khorasan (Afghanistan) and was preceded by IS’s nasheed, “Breaking the Borders” (Kasr al-Hudud), which previously played in the November 10, 2014, video featuring Shekau in a Borno mosque and captioned footage of Boko Haram “breaking the borders” between Nigeria and Cameroon.48 The IS al-Bayan (“The Statement”) radio bulletin immediately reported Shekau’s pledge, and on March 12, IS spokesman and al-Baghdadi’s deputy Abu Muhammed al-Adnani released an audio “congratulating the mujahidin of West Africa” and requesting Muslims “emigrate and join your brothers in West Africa.”49 Al-Hamad also followed with calls for jihadists to travel to Libya and Nigeria, although this occurred primarily only for Libya, and Muawiyah alQahtani tweeted that Shekau’s pledge “shamed” all jihadists who did not make the pledge.50 This indicated al-Qahtani hoped the pledge would encourage al-Qaeda affiliates to make pledges of loyalty to al-Baghdadi. However, although small factions within AQIM, AQAP, and al-Shabaab brigades defected and pledged loyalty to al-Baghdadi and al-Qaeda was initially willing to coexist with IS, top al-Qaeda leaders, including Abu Iyad al-Tunisi and later AQIM’s al-Bulaydi in a treatise and AQAP’s Harith alNazari in a video, all condemned IS by late 2014.51 This increased from 2015 onward, including from al-Zawahiri.52 IS also issued ten videos from provinces in Algeria, Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Iraq celebrating Shekau’s pledge, which was more than IS released for any other new province.53 The newly branded Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) succeeding Boko Haram, therefore, was welcomed with fanfare in IS. However, ISWAP did not shift the global jihadist movement’s balance of power decisively in IS’s favor vis-à-vis al-Qaeda. The Pledge’s Motives The events occurring behind the scenes of Shekau’s pledge were revealed in Abu Musab’s June 2018 book released on ISWAP’s private Telegram account and in statements from Mamman Nur and Abu Fatima and their rivals, Shekau and Man Chari, during ISWAP’s August 2016 leadership split. Their

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accounts confirmed Shekau accepted al-Baghdadi’s legitimacy as caliph. However, Shekau hesitated to pledge loyalty to al-Baghdadi until Nur, who ended his “retirement” and rejoined Boko Haram, and Abu Musab “compelled” Shekau to pledge by threatening to separate from him and pledge without him.54 Shekau might have preferred to remain rhetorically loyal to, but organizationally independent from, IS to avoid becoming subordinate to al-Baghdadi, especially if he suspected Abu Musab and Nur would lobby IS to demote him, which eventually occurred. Nevertheless, all of them were ultimately appeased by Shekau’s pledge and designation as ISWAP’s leader, or wali, corresponding to the Ottoman term for governor. IS’s November 2014 and February 2015 Dabiq editions, therefore, accurately portrayed Boko Haram’s situation. The former stated that jihadists in Nigeria were planning to pledge loyalty to al-Baghdadi and established a “direct line of communication” to IS, while the latter affirmed that group leaders’ unity, which Boko Haram was negotiating internally, was required for provinces.55 The March 2015 Africa-focused Dabiq edition further confirmed Shekau’s pledge and ISWAP’s formation.56 There was no indication Abu Musab, Nur, or Shekau was not genuinely loyal to al-Baghdadi. However, Nur had long-standing reservations about Shekau and relationships with al-Qaeda. Moreover, if Abu Musab inherited his father’s pedigree, he might also have considered remaining independent from IS but cooperating where beneficial, as Yusuf did with AQIM. It is also possible IS paid Boko Haram to pledge, which Jabhat al-Nusra claimed IS did for pro-IS Somali jihadists who still failed to convince al-Shabaab to abandon loyalty to al-Qaeda.57 However, there was no mention of financial incentives in any ISWAP communications concerning the pledge. Eventually, Abu Musab and Nur lobbied IS to demote Shekau for reasons described in Abu Iyad al-Tunisi’s July 2014 letter to al-Zawahiri, especially moderating ISWAP and sidelining the “extremist” (ahl al-ghalaw) Shekau. Their recognition of al-Baghdadi’s legitimacy as caliph was, therefore, only one of several factors involved in urging Shekau to pledge loyalty to al-Baghdadi. However, if motives aside from loyalty to al-Baghdadi were suspected by IS hard-liners, such deception could result in Abu Musab’s and Nur’s being labeled apostates or equivalent to “Jews of Jihad” as al-Qaeda was called. Meanwhile, Abu Fatima eventually opposed how Shekau’s “misconduct” toward commanders and civilians undermined the group’s dawla and incentivized CJTF “animals” to “chase us.”58 However, Abu Fatima was not necessarily civilian-friendly. One arrested Boko Haram commander claimed, for example, that Shekau “unilaterally” ordered Yobe school massacres conducted by Abu Fatima before Abu Fatima was eventually killed in Yobe.59 According to Abu Musab’s book and ISWAP’s 2018 eulogy of Abu Fatima, he was from or previously lived in Lagos, was a Yobe (Faruq)-based emir, and was “extremely furious” (hanaq shadeed) with Shekau.60 If this Abu

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Fatima was the same Abu Fatima as the 2011 Federal Police headquarters suicide bombing claimant and the “commander of suicide operations” named Abu Fatima who stated in 2012 that Boko Haram might “work together” with Ansaru, which itself hosted hideouts in Lagos, then Abu Fatima’s interest in sidelining Shekau was not only ideological but also about prioritizing operational effectiveness. Abu Fatima was, after all, a field commander like Khalid al-Barnawi and the late Abu Saad al-Bamawi, who both cooperated with Shekau and Ansaru when expedient. Furthermore, unless Abu Fatima was blindly “just following orders” from Shekau to target Yobe schools, Abu Fatima’s high-level ISWAP rank until his death indicated ISWAP still fielded “Shekau-like” commanders, even after the August 2016 leadership split. Khalid al-Barnawi, in contrast to Abu Fatima, never pledged loyalty to al-Baghdadi and remained in Ansaru’s good graces. This suggests why, after al-Barnawi’s arrest, Abu Usama al-Ansari requested in his January 2017 alRisalah article for God to release al-Barnawi from prison and eulogized “Shaykh Muhammed I,” which probably referred to the abbreviated name, Muhammed Ibrahim, used by Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe before his assassination.61 Al-Ansari would not have regarded al-Barnawi favorably by the al-Risalah article’s publication if al-Barnawi not only cooperated with Boko Haram but also pledged loyalty to al-Baghdadi. Moreover, before alBarnawi’s arrest, his cooperation reportedly shifted to Abu Musab, and not Shekau, the former being less hostile to Ansaru.62 This also explains why Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of seventeen Cameroonians in Kolofata that likely involved former Ansaru members was coordinated with Abu Musab’s camp in Sambisa, mentioned in Chapter 9. Al-Barnawi’s April 2016 arrest in Kogi and the subsequent arrest of al-Barnawi’s deputy, a Zamfara-born Fulani cattle rustler, also indicated Ansaru still held bases in Kogi three years after Ansaru’s ambush on Nigerian soldiers there, but also signaled al-Barnawi’s preparedness to strategically shift bases toward northwestern Nigeria’s forests, including in Zamfara and neighboring states, where Ansaru and ISWAP both increasingly operated in 2019.63 After the pledge, Abu Musab immediately undermined Shekau by sending questions to Saudi theologian Abu Malek al-Tamimi,64 whom IS designated as ISWAP’s shaikh.65 Al-Tamimi graduated from Riyadh-based Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University’s sharia program and was reportedly “groomed” for the Saudi ministry of justice, but he joined alQaeda in Afghanistan in 2009 and eventually traveled to Syria and switched loyalty to IS.66 Despite appearing in an April 2015 video justifying IS beheadings of Libya-based Ethiopian Christians refusing dhimmitude (legal protection under Islamic rule), who were all forced to wear Guantanamostyle jumpsuits, al-Tamimi’s own relative moderation was reflected in his responses supporting Abu Musab’s and Nur’s theological positions vis-à-vis Shekau.67 Al-Tamimi, for example, wrote that living outside IS territories or

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holding national identity cards, which jihadists sometimes needed, did not make Muslims apostates unless loyalty was shown to governments. This rebuked Shekau’s position that anyone holding national identity cards was an apostate. Like Abu Mundhir al-Shinqiti’s comments after Boko Haram’s first Yobe school massacre and the Abu Musab–led media team’s November 26, 2014, correspondence to Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad about targeting a Maiduguri market only because CJTF members were there, al-Tamimi argued schools and markets should not be targeted unless progovernment Muslims there might imminently harm jihadists.68 Al-Tamimi, therefore, opposed Shekau’s theology and exemplified how IS moderates’ theology sometimes resembled al-Qaeda’s, which also reflected how some IS scholars were formerly al-Qaeda scholars, including al-Tamimi. In his book, Abu Musab also cited Muhammed Yusuf’s sermon in which Yusuf described how Muhammed Ali’s followers declared takfir on him and noted al-Tamimi rejected Shekau’s adopting chain takfir like that of Muhammed Ali.69 This refers to the concept whereby any Muslim not declaring takfir on other Muslims who have become apostates (Yusuf in Muhammed Ali’s case) become apostates themselves, and anyone not declaring takfir on those apostates then also becomes an apostate. This leads to irrational and potentially infinite chains of Muslims becoming apostates until, as in Ali’s and Shekau’s cases, the entire society virtually no longer consists of Muslims. However, when the unofficial pro-IS theological group, Scholarly Heritage Foundation (Muassasat al-Turath al-’Ilmi), published on Telegram alTamimi’s originally private March 2015 responses to ISWAP in a March 2018 document called “Nigerian Questions,” it indicated al-Tamimi’s advice would have been rejected or considered suspect by IS hard-liners. This is because IS hard-liners believed the Scholarly Heritage Foundation collaborated with foreign intelligence agencies, IS defectors, or possibly alQaeda to dilute IS ideology by promoting moderate positions, especially after IS began losing its “territorial caliphate” in Iraq and Syria and was vulnerable to internal dissent. Therefore, IS hard-liners purged Scholarly Heritage Foundation theologians, but al-Baghdadi accepted their position on chain takfir to avoid becoming an infidel himself by not declaring alZawahiri an infidel because al-Zawahiri did not pledge loyalty to him. According to some IS hard-liners, this made al-Zawahiri an infidel and thus al-Baghdadi one, too.70 Although al-Tamimi died in May 2015 fighting in Syria before that purge, his advice, Scholarly Heritage Foundation’s publication of it, and Abu Musab and Nur’s adopting it may have made IS hardliners suspicious of Abu Musab and Nur in March 2018. Concurrent with al-Tamimi’s death, Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad and Muawiyah al-Qahtani abandoned social media. This coincided with alQahtani’s al-Battar Media Foundation cofounder’s being executed by AQAP,

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which alleged he defected from IS to AQAP but was a Saudi spy planting tracking devices on senior AQAP leaders, which assisted US drone strikes that killed three AQAP leaders in Yemen from February to April 2015: Harith al-Nazari; former Guantanamo detainee Ibrahim al-Rubaysh; and former Afghanistan Faruq camp– and Philippines-based jihadist military trainer and Yemen-based Iman University Islamic jurisprudence graduate Nasir bin Ali al-Anisi.71 Al-Qaeda thus claimed IS was a CIA project to kill jihadists, while IS counterclaimed AQAP was so infiltrated by the CIA that AQAP was the CIA project. Following these accusations IS media activist Ahmad Abousamra leaked Abu Iyad al-Tunisi’s letter to al-Zawahiri from July 2014 to prove al-Qaeda were deceitful “Jews of Jihad.” The affair involving al-Qahtani’s al-Battar Media Foundation cofounder raised IS suspicions about other media activists, which gained validity when IS confirmed in 2018 that a pro-IS women’s media unit included several Saudi spies who claimed to be from wealthy families and infiltrated pro-IS media teams, including al-Battar Media Foundation.72 Like US, European, and Saudi intelligence operations against mid-2000s al-Qaeda jihadist web forum users, these women “honeypots” sowed dissent between IS moderates and hard-liners, collected IS media activists’ passwords, and released phony IS publications.73 While al-Qahtani still published pro-IS articles after May 2015, al-Hamad fell silent, but surprisingly was listed among Syria-based foreign fighters pledging neutrality between al-Qaeda-aligned factions in 2017.74 After losing two interlocutors to IS, including pro–Abu Musab al-Tamimi and pro-Shekau al-Hamad, if not also al-Qahtani, ISWAP media slowed. The group opened new Twitter accounts but nobody posted.75 ISWAP further released photostreams honoring “media martyrs,” including one martyr, Atta Bashir, with whom Shayba al-Hamad claimed being in communication immediately after Shekau’s pledge, as well as videos proclaiming vast territories beyond Sambisa and one in which Abu Fatima discussed fighting “Nigeria’s army and the African Union.”76 However, there were no signs of Shekau in ISWAP media after the pledge. This indicated Abu Musab’s ISWAP media team was reluctant to promote Shekau just as Abu Musab-managed al-Urwa al-Wutqha initially did not mention Shekau after its launch. ISWAP, therefore, was still comprised of two factions: one led by Shekau, who was formally ISWAP’s leader, and one led by Abu Musab, who managed ISWAP media. While ISWAP videos portraying tamkin suited IS narratives, ISWAP actually lost territory after Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, and South African military contractors led by former South African Defence Force officer Eeben Barlow supported Nigeria’s army to expel ISWAP from most towns it controlled starting in February 2015.77 Nevertheless, relatively few ISWAP fighters were killed because they retreated to rural bases while increasing asymmetric counterattacks in Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, especially female suicide bombings. Boko Haram, then soon to become ISWAP, for example,

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launched its first female suicide bombings in Niger in February 2015, just as African Union officials met in Cameroon to discuss military intervention against Boko Haram.78 ISWAP further deployed four suicide bombers in N’Djamena in June–July 2015, including one whose gender was unknown but wore a burqa before detonating in a market, leading Chad to ban burqas.79 The suicide bombers’ civilian targets nevertheless indicated that Shekau loyalists masterminded their operations, including trafficker Bana Fanaye, who admitted to being a “soldier of religion,” fighting “enemies of God,” and sending arms to “protect our Quranic school in Sambisa” when Chad sentenced him to death alongside his cell members in August 2015.80 ISWAP, however, released martyrdom statements only for male suicide bombers, including in N’Djamena, and never honored any women as martyrs or mujahidin, including when three more female suicide bombers struck Chad in December 2015.81 Presumably, these women were also deployed by ISWAP’s Shekau faction because Abu Musab was unlikely to approve that tactic. Despite setbacks and internal differences, including over female suicide bombings, after March 2015, ISWAP retained sufficient strength to continue fighting. The harm inflicted on Nigeria’s neighbors also made them pay heavy prices for their military interventions in Borno. Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, therefore, retreated from Borno and fought ISWAP primarily within their territories, leaving Nigeria to battle ISWAP on its own. ISWAP in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Northwestern Nigeria After Shekau’s pledge to al-Baghdadi, ISWAP leaders maintained online, but few physical, contacts with IS members in Iraq and Syria. Aside from an Abuja science teacher who converted to Islam and joined IS’s “Education Department” before being killed in Syria and eulogized by IS in 2019, the only other Nigerian jihadist reported in Iraq or Syria was Ibrahim Uwais.82 He was the son of Nigeria’s former chief justice who investigated Maitatsine disciples’ 1984 deadly uprising in Adamawa when Muhammadu Buhari was Nigeria’s military ruler. The clandestineness and timing of Uwais’s February 2015 travel with two wives and five children through Turkey to Syria without relatives knowing and just before Shekau’s pledge, however, suggested his possible foreknowledge of the pledge. Moreover, if reports were correct about Uwais’s death in May 2016 US airstrikes in Iraq alongside high-level Iraqi IS commander Abu Waheeb, whose subcommander praised Shekau’s pledge in a March 2015 video from al-Raqqa, Syria, then Uwais might have had contacts in IS leadership.83 Further, Uwais epitomized how twelve years after Kanama camp’s fall, elites still were among Nigerian jihadists. Meanwhile, in his book, Abu Musab mentioned attempting to travel to Libya with his brother, presumably fellow media official Abba al-Barnawi, to report on Shekau to IS.84 However, just as Shekau attempted to prevent

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fighters, including Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi, from traveling to Algeria or Somalia before 2012, he also prohibited Abu Musab and his brother’s departure to Libya in 2015.85 Abu Musab’s interrupted travel nevertheless coincided with a reported April 2015 “welcoming parade” in Sirte, Libya for “Boko Haram.”86 In addition, there were June 2015 tweets from two IS fighters in Derna, Libya, about “Abubakar Shekau’s sons,” “descendants of Bilal ibn Rabah,”87 and “Nigerian reinforcements” arriving through Libya’s southern Fezzan region to Derna to fight the “Sahwat” (Awakening Councilmen), referring to Sunni Muslim collaborators with the U.S. in Iraq but applied to anti-IS Sunni Muslims anywhere.88 Later, there were also December 2015 and January 2016 reports from Libya about Nigerians’ manning Sirte checkpoints and assisting IS’s capture of Sirte’s strategic alSidra port.89 Although Abu Musab never joined Nigerians in Libya, he may have still reported on Shekau through ISWAP members who traveled there. After IS’s late-2015 defeat in Derna, Nigerian jihadists, children, and wives of Sudanese, Malians, and Tunisians in Libya were only seen in IS videos, online posts, martyrdom claims, and marriage and fighter logs in Sirte.90 This explains why Al Jazeera’s interviews of Libyan officials and reporting after IS lost Sirte in 2016 confirmed a “Boko Haram camp” in the city.91 One Sirte-based recruiter of Nigerians was IS “media expert” Abu Isa al-Amriki, whose identity the United States never revealed, but some suspected he was among around twenty Westerners who joined IS while studying medicine in Khartoum.92 Hence his other alias was Abu Saad al-Sudani (“the Sudanese”).93 Before the United States killed al-Amriki and his Australian wife in April 2016 airstrikes in Syria, receipts of al-Amriki’s ownership of three female slaves were found in Sirte and indicated he was in Sirte when Nigerians were there in January 2016.94 Further US investigations revealed al-Amriki coordinated Western Union payments and external operations with Americans, Canadians, Germans, Indians, including an online acquaintance of “Shami Witness,” and Nigerians.95 One of al-Amriki’s US citizen recruits was Sierra Leone–born refugee and national guardsman Mohamed Jallo, whose money transfers to al-Amriki from the United States were tracked in early 2016.96 Before then, al-Amriki communicated with Jallo and sent Western Union payments to IS facilitator Abdussalam Enesi Yunusa in Kano during the weeks Jallo spent in Nigeria around August 2015.97 After Jallo’s July 2016 arrest in Virginia, he confessed that a “really good [caliphate] brother” in Nigeria, perhaps Yunusa, sent him on a migrant convoy to join IS in Libya.98 However, Jallo departed the convoy in Niger because passengers were “packed like sardines” and whipped.99 Jallo then traveled to Sierra Leone, returned to the United States, and was arrested after al-Amriki connected him to an FBI informant in Virginia posing as an IS supporter. The informant learned Jallo was planning “Nidal Hassan–style” attacks, referring to the murder spree at a Texas military post in

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2009 by a US Army major communicating with Anwar al-Awlaki and who formerly prayed with al-Awlaki when al-Awlaki was Virginia-based Dar alHijrah mosque’s imam in 2001–2002.100 Other Nigerians nevertheless completed the Nigeria-Niger-Libya route to join IS in Libya. The SSS arrested Yunusa, a Federal University of Technology student in Minna, Niger State, with three recruits, including one woman, days after Jallo’s January 2016 return to the United States. They were all planning to join IS in Libya and meet two other Libya-based Nigerians who originally recruited Yunusa. Also revealed was Yunusa’s collaboration with Ibrahim Jihadi in Niger to send Nigerians to Libya and Abu Isa al-Amriki’s funding Yunusa through Western Union payments.101 Like other Ansaru members, Yunusa’s middle name, Enesi (“beloved son” in Ebira), indicated his Kogi origin, and his field of study, media technology, suggests why he coordinated with al-Amriki, a “media expert.” One of Yunusa’s recruits, Yahaya Momoh Jimoh, also had a Kogi Ebira name, and the recruiter expecting Yunusa in Libya, Abubakar Ligali, had a southern Nigerian name.102 This reflected how IS’s appeal transcended “sect,” “town,” or “region” in a way that MUJWA, Ansaru, and the 2013 Monguno barracks raid commander desired, but that Shekau-led Boko Haram’s Borno and Kanuri favoritism failed to do. This is also why Ansaru members and southern Nigerians were prone to join ISWAP after Shekau’s March 2015 pledge to al-Baghdadi, and especially after Abu Musab’s August 2016 ousting of Shekau from ISWAP leadership. At the same time as Yunusa’s arrest, the SSS announced it also uncovered a seven-member “IS-affiliated” Ansaru cell in Katsina, a five-member cell in Kano planning to join IS in Libya with their wives and children, and a university student in Kwara, which borders Kogi, who was communicating with IS.103 A separate three-member Ansaru cell in Kogi that planned to join IS in Libya was later uncovered in August 2016, and in 2017 another cell in Kogi including one bomb-making “apprentice” who joined IS in Libya was reportedly responsible for killing two policemen near Okene, Kogi.104 One year later, in 2018, the SSS arrested an ISWAP member “closely associated” with Ansaru’s leadership, whose base was in the same Kaduna district where Khalid al-Barnawi stored explosives before his arrest two years earlier.105 These reports demonstrated there were routes for Nigerians’ travel to IS in Libya, and that Ansaru members joined not only Boko Haram after the al-Barnawi–Shekau reconciliation but also ISWAP after Shekau’s pledge to al-Baghdadi in March 2015. Moreover, once Shekau was replaced by Abu Musab as ISWAP leader in August 2016 there would have been additional incentives for theologically minded Ansaru members to join ISWAP because they shared Abu Musab’s concern for Muslim civilians and opposition to Shekau’s leadership, including his Borno and Kanuri favoritism. Ansaru defections explain why the Boko Haram and ISWAP Abu Musab–led media teams’ narratives reflected Ansaru influences and Abu Musab decisively

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acknowledged in his June 2018 book that Ansaru members “joined the convoy of the caliphate,” referring to ISWAP.106 Although Ansaru members joined Boko Haram and later ISWAP, there were still some Ansaru holdouts who claimed to be in Libya and were loyal to al-Qaeda after IS lost Sirte in 2016.107 Ansaru, however, only revived operations in Nigeria in 2019 when surges of kidnapping-for-ransom operations, robberies, and killings afflicted northwestern Nigeria, especially Zamfara, where Ansaru claimed, albeit without proof, to protect civilians from bandits in its February 9, 2015, video and where Khalid al-Barnawi’s arrested deputy hailed.108 Ansaru desired to transform that region’s rampant banditry into a longer-term jihadist project and operated alongside ISWAP “deserters” from the Lake Chad subregion.109 These ISWAP deserters in 2019 may have been concerned about increasing Nigerian air strikes on ISWAP’s Lake Chad camps or ISWAP hard-liners’ rising power around Lake Chad or, if they were still ISWAP-loyal, then they may have been raising money from banditry for ISWAP’s Lake Chad–based operations. However, Ansaru and ISWAP members in northwestern Nigeria were still outnumbered by non-jihadist “Fulani armed [bandit] groups” by late 2019.110 One day after Abubakar al-Baghdadi was killed by US special forces in Syria in October 2019, longtime al-Qaeda media distributor, the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), released Arabic, Hausa, and English versions of a photograph of three Ansaru fighters in a Nigerian forest holding the black-and-white flag used most prominently by IS, but also used by other jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda affiliates.111 Two months later, Ansaru released another photograph on Telegram of its fighters with motorcycles in a forest village, which was presumably in northwestern Nigeria’s Dajin Rugu forest spanning Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna, and Niger states.112 This suggested Ansaru cells relocated from Bauchi’s forests where they were under pressure from Nigeria’s army toward northwestern Nigeria’s forests and GIMF and Ansaru leveraged IS’s setback to promote Ansaru, just as Ansar al-Islam’s remaining al-Qaeda-loyal Iraqi Kurdish jihadists, who alRisalah featured alongside Ansaru in January 2017, released their first attack claim since 2014 one day after al-Baghdadi’s death.113 Similar to Ansaru’s releasing two videos before Boko Haram’s joining IS in March 2015, after al-Baghdadi’s death Ansaru again desired to make its presence known to global jihadists. Relatedly, when Europol supported massive crackdowns on jihadist Telegram accounts in November 2019, Ansaru quickly adapted and established its own Rocket.Chat channel to present “official news that’s coming from Nigeria.”114 Although Ansaru had not claimed any operations since its January 2013 Kogi ambush and January 2015 Bauchi-Jos highway checkpoint attack, its members were biding time and finally confirmed their reactivating cells when claiming on Telegram and through al-Qaeda-affiliated media channels the January 15, 2020, killing of

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soldiers and abduction of passengers in an ambush on the Potiskum emir’s convoy on the Kaduna-Zaria highway. Although Ansaru soon asserted the time was not yet “ripe” for “media publicity,” it still promised to free from prison Khalid al-Barnawi, one Zaria militant, and two Okene, Kogi militants, including Abu Suyuti.115 The latter preached at Mallam Mustapha’s Markaz Ahlussunnah wal-Jamma and headed the joint Ansaru-Boko Haram cell, mentioned in Chapter 8, which likely would have aligned more with Abu Musab’s loyalists than Shekau in Boko Haram at that time.116 Furthermore, Ansaru’s July 2018 release of Hausa nasheeds, including one mentioning the “jangali” (historic cattle tax on Fulanis in Hausaland condemned by Usman dan Fodio), and its May 2019 release of audio messages in Hausa and for the first time in Fulani referencing Usman dan Fodio’s jihad, promising to establish sharia and help “weak” Muslims, and disavowing killing innocent Muslims implied Ansaru was seeking Fulani recruits and reasserting its founding ideology.117 Presumably, Ansaru was also implementing AQIM’s playbook by immersing into northwestern Nigerian Fulani communities to win them to Ansaru’s jihadist cause and protecting them from, or sometimes even allying with, bandits, including in the Potiskum emir’s convoy ambush. Ansaru members’ basing around northwestern Nigeria also placed them geographically nearer to al-Qaedaloyal, Fulani-led, and Mali-based jihadists with whom they could ally while maintaining distance from Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria, which could still threaten them. In contrast, ISWAP “deserters” were not necessarily Ansaru’s allies, but they were also not enemies, and even ISWAP’s moderates like Abu Musab’s loyalists could likely cooperate with Ansaru. Attempting to Dethrone the Leader While ISWAP’s contacts with IS in Iraq and Syria were primarily online, ISWAP members in Libya could meet IS Libyan province leaders who reported to IS in Syria. IS’s leader in Libya was an Iraqi deployed there by al-Baghdadi, but he was killed in November 2015 US airstrikes in Derna.118 However, his deputy, Moez Fezzani, like ISWAP members, was in Sirte by 2016. Fezzani, a Tunisian-Italian Bosnian jihad and GSPC veteran, was captured in Afghanistan after 9/11 and extradited to Italy and acquitted. He then joined Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia, Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, and finally elite pro-IS foreign fighters in Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, whose Libyans repatriated on al-Baghdadi’s orders to form IS’s province in Derna with Ansar al-Sharia in Libya defectors to IS and local IS supporters. Before IS lost Sirte, Fezzani relocated with dozens of sub-Saharan Africans to Sabratha, Libya, where their training camp was hit by US airstrikes March 2016.119 Fezzani then moved to Sudan but was arrested in August 2016, and deported to Italy. He was subsequently described as a

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“point of contact” to ISWAP and responsible for IS’s “media platform,” indicating he could have corresponded with Abu Musab, who shared that same position in ISWAP.120 In addition to a Libyan IS defector’s observing Katibat al-Battar al-Libi’s “connection” (tawasul) to “Boko Haram” and jihadists in Mali, this implies Fezzani was among IS liaisons in Libya or Sudan who approved Abu Musab’s becoming ISWAP leader by August 2016.121 However, another similarly situated IS member facilitating ISWAP communications with IS liaisons in Libya or Sudan was Sudanese Fulani Abu Asim alSudani al-Fallata, who was extensively eulogized in IS’s al-Naba (The Announcement) newsletter. It recounted his studying computer science at Khartoum’s International University of Africa, becoming an IS “media officer,” and fighting with ISWAP, but after being captured and released by Chad in 2016, he was killed fighting with IS in Libya in 2018.122 Although IS’s demoting Shekau and naming Abu Musab as leader had roots in Nur’s resisting Shekau’s being named Yusuf’s successor in 2009, the first high-level ISWAP defection from Shekau was not Abu Musab or Nur but Chadian national Mahamat Daud. He reportedly followed Yusuf before July 2009, liaised between Boko Haram and Mali-based MUJWA in 2012, and headed Shekau’s security detail after 2012.123 This also implies Daud facilitated the al-Barnawi–Shekau reconciliation, if not also Shekau’s travel in the Sahel after April 2012, because Daud was close to jihadists in Mali, especially MUJWA, and to Shekau. Daud eventually defected from ISWAP because he believed Yusuf would not have pledged loyalty to al-Baghdadi, that Shekau was too “polarizing,” and that if anyone should be ISWAP leader, Daud himself was most qualified.124 After defecting, Daud reportedly revived Boko Haram (Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad) without any public announcement and contacted Nigerian and Chadian officials about negotiating cease-fires in return for an autonomous Islamic state, which prompted Chadian President Déby’s August 15, 2015, pronouncement that Daud overthrew Shekau.125 One day later, however, IS released an ISWAP audio from Shekau, which was his first ISWAP media appearance since the pledge, asserting he was alive and loyal to al-Baghdadi and cursing Muhammadu Buhari and Déby.126 This demonstrated ISWAP’s ability to rapidly coordinate with IS’s centralized media apparatus and that Abu Musab likely approved Shekau’s audio because they had mutual interests in opposing Daud’s defection despite their own differences. In September 2015, ISWAP released another Shekau audio stating he was leader, loyal to al-Baghdadi, and greeting Abu Muhammed al-Adnani. However, Shekau’s script was clearly his own. He, for example, called Nigeria’s army spokesman a “baboon’s tail,” accused Buhari of lying to Chad, referred to himself as “Obama’s nightmare,” and condemned Izala for believing “democracy does not deviate from Islam.”127 Another ISWAP video, on

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October 14, 2015, seemingly responded to Daud’s defection by rekindling narratives appealing to Daud’s MUJWA experiences.128 The video featured an elder ISWAP member speaking in accented, and probably nonnative, Hausa and requesting the “mujahidin of Somalia”—a reference to alShabaab, whose leaders began suppressing pro-IS Somali jihadists in October 2015—pledge loyalty to al-Baghdadi like “our brothers” in Libya, Yemen, and “West Africa, who were in Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad,” and stated the benefit of “uniting under one imam” is ending divisions.129 This referred to divisions in Somalia and ISWAP itself and possibly challenged Shekau’s belief in the “multiplicity of imams.”130 Similar to narratives from MUJWA, Katibat al-Mulathamin, and the 2013 and 2015 Monguno barracks raid commanders was also the elder’s call for ending sectarianism based on “our place (wajenmu), our tribe (kabilanmu), and our skin color (launinfatanmu).”131 If anything could influence a jihadist with Daud’s MUJWA background, then this video was it. Neither that video nor ISWAP’s internal diplomacy wooed Daud, however, and he reportedly “retired” from jihad and received haven in Chad.132 The elder’s message nevertheless demonstrated that one function of ISWAP media was to relay messages publicly to IS members and supporters, defectors, and jihadists abroad, including Somalis, and only then to the general public, which initially rarely noticed ISWAP videos let alone transcribed them. Thus, although ISWAP’s videos were posted on IS online platforms for virtually anyone to see, they presented opportunities to discuss certain matters transparently and with greater immediacy than secret meetings. The directive to produce this ISWAP elder’s video must have come from IS’s centralized media apparatus because the video supported IS’s broader messaging campaign urging Somali jihadists to pledge loyalty to al-Baghdadi, including videos from Libya, Yemen, Iraq, al-Battar Media Foundation, and pro-IS al-Shabaab dissidents.133 However, ISWAP introduced its own narratives, including the elder’s antisectarian theme unseen in other IS videos. Moreover, unlike IS videos calling al-Shabaab “traitorous” or anyone not pledging loyalty to al-Baghdadi “pagans,” this video and all ISWAP videos never included any polemics against al-Qaeda or alShabaab.134 This reflected the Abu Musab–led ISWAP media team’s moderation, if not also subtle respect for al-Qaeda because of AQIM’s previous support to Boko Haram and its honoring Muhammed Yusuf’s “martyrdom.” IS might have overlooked Abu Musab’s pro-al-Qaeda tendencies considering his stated loyalty to al-Baghdadi, but there may still have been suspicions about him. Shekau withstood Daud’s revolt, and in September 2015 ISWAP released an Eid al-Fitr prayer video with around five hundred men and dozens of women behind them and hisba officials monitoring everyone. The imam was obviously a Shekau loyalist, however, because he taunted

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Buhari, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama like only Shekau did.135 This video, therefore, indicated Shekau loyalists still contributed to ISWAP media. Moreover, holding such large prayers without worrying about airstrikes or spies tracking commanders indicated ISWAP was relatively secure in its territories. Nigerian security forces were seemingly not leveraging ISWAP internal friction to pit commanders against each other like they did when Shekau “lost” information that led to Ansaru members’ elimination.136 However, Shekau’s wrath was harshest against Ansaru because Ansaru formally separated from Shekau whereas Abu Musab and Mamman Nur did not, at least until August 2016. In October 2015, ISWAP released another video of Shekau’s deputy, Man Chari, with forty fighters in IS-style black uniforms reaffirming their loyalty to al-Baghdadi.137 In November 2015, another ISWAP video featured Chari with uniformed fighters cutting off the hands of thieves and shooting to death a goat and a young boy for “bestiality.”138 However, only that shooting was not disseminated by IS media presumably because it did not adhere to IS’s strict media guidelines, which IS detailed in manuals for provinces.139 The boy, for example, was probably too young for IS punishment videos while killing the goat was too outlandish. The Eid al-Fitr and Man Chari videos combined with Shekau’s September and October 2015 audios reaffirming loyalty to IS assisted Shekau to suppress challenges to his leadership. Moreover, the videos implied Shekau’s loyalists maintained some autonomy from Abu Musab to produce videos and liaise with IS for their dissemination. However, Shekau was barred from appearing in ISWAP videos and only spoke in two audios. Man Chari, in contrast, appeared in videos. This must have reflected concerns from both IS’s centralized media apparatus and Abu Musab about Shekau’s erratic behavior that eventually contributed to Shekau’s ouster. Overthrowing the Leader One year after Shekau’s pledge, ISWAP averaged around twenty attacks monthly, primarily in Borno, Yobe, and northern Cameroon and, to a lesser extent, southeastern Niger and Lake Chad islands in Chad.140 ISWAP’s leaders, however, were based in Sambisa until conflict with Shekau resurfaced. New signs of friction were revealed after a video was posted by Nigerian media agencies on Facebook on March 24, 2016.141 Headlines claimed Shekau “surrendered” despite Shekau’s “saluting” fighters and claiming to “show my face” to prove he was alive, while acknowledging unspecified “secret matters” and mentioning nothing about surrender.142 The video was actually produced, but never released, by Boko Haram in 2014 and carried Boko Haram’s pre–March 2015 logo, referred to Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad in credits, and featured Mektab

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al-Ghuraba (Strangers’ Media Office)143 branding seen also in Boko Haram’s November 1, 2014, Shekau video.144 This video’s posting on Facebook by media agencies, therefore, was possibly intended to demoralize Shekau loyalists or make Shekau resurface to see if he was still alive because he had been unseen since his February 17, 2015, video on al-Urwa alWutqha. The video posted on Facebook might even have been orchestrated by the SSS using material that was captured from Boko Haram’s camps because the video was never released publicly and, therefore, was probably not intended for public dissemination. The original video file’s title was “Message to Fulanis” (Risalah ila alFulanin) and Shekau’s mention of Katsina and “Garin Darussalam,” referring to Niger State, in the video indicated Shekau’s purpose was building networks in northwestern Nigeria to raise funds from banditry.145 Nevertheless, by 2019 the bandit leader in northwestern Nigeria who had the strongest ties to foreign jihadists, especially in Niger and Mali, and who was responsible for killing the most ruthless Fulani bandit leader, maintained a “steady liaison” with Ansaru, not Boko Haram. Meanwhile, other Boko Haram members in northwestern Nigeria defected to Ansaru.146 This meant Boko Haram was weaker than ISWAP and certainly Ansaru in northwestern Nigeria by 2019, but the group compensated for this by establishing new alliances around Lake Chad, discussed subsequently. Typical for Shekau, his loyalists responded quickly to the video posted on Facebook with a March 31, 2016, ISWAP video called “Investigate,”147 which IS promoted in its al-Naba newsletter and al-Bayan radio bulletin.148 This video featured Boko Haram’s typical cinematographic setting with Shekau beside lined-up fighters and pickup trucks with mounted weapons.149 Although Shekau was not in the “Investigate” video because of ISWAP media restrictions on his public appearances, another commander warned against lies and affirmed “pious shaikh Shekau” was the leader and loyal to al-Baghdadi.150 This demonstrated Shekau loyalists’ defending him by reacting to the Facebook-posted video. Additionally, this video was likely choreographed by Shekau’s long-standing media team because of the distinct setting, which reflected how tensions between Abu Musab and Shekau caused the former’s departure from ISWAP’s camps in Sambisa by April 2016 with Abu Musab’s own media team and loyalists. After the “Investigate” video, ISWAP attacks reached an April 2016 low of twelve attacks as leadership disputes intensified.151 Abu Musab and his younger brother, Abba al-Barnawi, Mamman Nur, and Abu Fatima also departed Sambisa for camps around Lake Chad, towns north of Maiduguri, and Yobe. Another commander, Abubakar Mainok, also departed Sambisa to a Lake Chad–based camp. 152 Mainok previously paid for repatriating Senegalese fighters directed to join ISWAP by a Senegalese IUM graduate, who was Senegalese IS fighters’ emir in Libya. Their travel to Nigeria,

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however, was supported by a student in the Gulf region who donated money to a Dakar mosque, from which the Senegalese fighters embezzled funds.153 When arrested after returning to Senegal, these fighters claimed Shekau declared them apostates for holding Senegalese identity documents, but Shekau finally consented to their departure, Mainok gave them money, and Shekau sent an “ambassador” to them, who was Muhammed Yusuf’s former student, Mohammed Adam.154 However, Mohammed Adam was arrested in Mauritania and extradited to Senegal.155 The Senegalese fighters’ claims about Gwoza battles and being in Sambisa with Shekau and Mainok and Mainok’s Sambisa departure indicate Mainok opposed Shekau, but he later conflicted with Mamman Nur, which is why he supported Nur’s purging in 2018.156 The Senegalese jihadists’ case also demonstrated that if they could coordinate travel to Sambisa from Libya and Senegal, then Nigerians in Libya were certainly capable of returning to Borno to fight with ISWAP after IS lost Sirte in July 2016. The seemingly unobstructed movement throughout Borno of Abu Musab, Abba al-Barnawi, Mamman Nur, Abu Fatima, and Mainok, moreover, revealed their sense of security, while the decreased attack rate in April revealed how ISWAP leadership disputes hindered military effectiveness. From May to August 2016, ISWAP’s attack rate remained low, with only eleven attacks in August when leadership conflicts surfaced publicly again.157 Two exceptional operations, however, were ISWAP’s June barracks raids in Bosso and Diffa, Niger, which IS promoted in ISWAP videos, including one featuring a Kanuri commander’s motivational speech.158 These first raids in Niger also enabled Abu Musab to expand arms stockpiles beyond those conveyed from Sambisa. Despite ISWAP’s reduced attack rate and its claiming no more than one attack in any month after April 2015, in June and July 2016, ISWAP claimed four attacks each month, including in Borno, Yobe, and Niger.159 This indicated IS exerted extra efforts to promote ISWAP before IS’s August 2016 designation of Abu Musab as ISWAP’s new leader. Whoever in IS allowed Shekau’s loyalists to reassert Shekau’s leadership in ISWAP’s March 31, 2016, “Investigate” video either was sidelined or reconsidered supporting Shekau by June. Moreover, Bosso’s location on Lake Chad’s shoreline indicated fighters loyal to Lake Chad–based Abu Musab must have launched not only the Bosso and Diffa raids but also a new series of attacks along Niger’s border with Yobe and Borno starting in June, including one in the group’s historically significant Kanama village. 160 Abu Musab may have been demonstrating to IS leadership his worthiness to lead ISWAP by escalating attacks in his new Lake Chad and Nigeria-Niger borderland operational areas. Those areas would also constitute Abu Musab’s main operational areas after the August 2016 ISWAP leadership split, while Sambisa remained Shekau’s hub.

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IS announced Abu Musab as ISWAP leader, or wali, in an August 3, 2016, al-Naba article interviewing him.161 His responses included implicit alQaeda references by mentioning the group’s training “in the Sahara” before shifting to “guerrilla war” in Nigeria. However, Abu Musab neither mentioned al-Qaeda because it was IS’s rival nor condemned Shekau to avoid sowing divisions, and even acknowledged Shekau’s becoming Yusuf’s successor after Yusuf’s death. Abu Musab also echoed his moderate Ansaru-like tone when he discussed ISWAP’s avoiding harming civilians, and his focus on Lake Chad’s strategic importance resembled his January 27, 2015, alUrwa al-Wutqha interview.162 Without mentioning al-Baghdadi, Abu Musab further noted his loyalty to IS was based on Quranic and hadith injunctions and the desire for Muslim unity and reviving the “glory of the caliphate.”163 One day before Abu Musab’s interview, however, on August 2, 2016, a portion of audio recordings of Mamman Nur and Abu Fatima lecturing followers was leaked to coincide with the al-Naba article.164 Not an official IS production, the audio featured Nur and Abu Fatima explaining reasons for siding with Abu Musab, Abba al-Barnawi, and Ba Idrisa165 against Shekau.166 Ba Idrisa, who was a former Muhammed Yusuf follower, later dethroned Abu Musab in March 2019 and, according to Nur’s lecture, he once bravely explained to Shekau how Shekau misinterpreted a Quranic verse about war, which enraged Shekau.167 Nur’s accusations against Shekau were nearly identical to those in the then future Ansaru members’ 2011 shura letter to Abdullah al-Shinqiti, mentioned in Chapter 8. However, Nur detailed even more cases where Shekau killed commanders and made false claims to explain their absences. He also condemned Shekau’s indifference toward starving babies while Shekau hoarded food, and Shekau’s “sleeping with wives and slaves,” echoing grievances aired by Abu Aisha.168 Nur’s revelations about Shekau’s Stalinist tendencies explain why only sycophants like Man Chari remained as Shekau’s deputies. What insulated Shekau from rebellion, however, was his legitimate succession of, and continued respect for, Yusuf, just as Stalin demonstrated for his predecessor, Vladimir Lenin. However, this might be why only Yusuf’s son, Abu Musab, possessed sufficient legitimacy to dethrone Shekau, especially when IS backed him. In fact, Nur reportedly masterminded ISWAP’s negotiations with IS liaisons about deposing Shekau, but Nur accepted the ISWAP shura’s vote for Abu Musab to replace Shekau. Despite being senior to Abu Musab, this helped Nur avoid appearing “power-hungry.”169 Just as Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi revolted against Shekau and formed Ansaru before Shekau killed the entire shura, Nur demonstrated urgency to remove Shekau because Shekau’s killing numerous commanders hindered military effectiveness. Nur, for example, mentioned Shekau killed the group’s most expert bomb-maker, “Abu RPG [Rocket-Propelled

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Grenade],” because he sought to leave Sambisa, but his less competent successor then blinded himself while manufacturing explosives.170 Nur also recounted that Shekau killed Abu Maryam;171 Kaduna-born Abu Mujahid, who was reportedly injured in an airstrike in Adamawa with Nur in 2014 and, according to Datty Assalafiy, was Shaikh Albani’s former student and masterminded Shaikh Albani’s assassination; and Moustapha Chad, whose US terrorist designation indicated he succeeded Khalid al-Barnawi’s deputy, UN bombing mastermind Babagana Assalafi, on the shura after Assalafi’s death in 2013.172 Therefore, Moustapha Chad would have been among Boko Haram’s elite Ansaru, AQIM-trained, and formerly Mali-based jihadists like Khalid al-Barnawi and Babagana Assalafi, as well as Shaikh Jaafar’s reported assassin, Ibrahim Uquba al-Muhajir, and MUJWA liaison Mahamat Daud. They all contributed to Boko Haram’s sophisticated and specialized tactics, including suicide bombings, international kidnapping operations, and barracks raids. Abu Musab even described Moustapha Chad as commanding most of the group’s territorial conquests.173 Moustapha Chad’s reported former Chadian military service also resembled the 2015 Monguno barracks raid video commander who wore Chadian army attire and suggests Chadians, including also Mahamat Daud, contributed to Boko Haram’s military successes and alliances to Arabic-speaking and francophone jihadists in Mali.174 Nur further mentioned he emigrated with Bana Banki after July 2009, but Banki was killed by Shekau for holding national identity documents, despite singing nasheeds to Shekau to spare his life. Abu Musab noted Shekau had other reasons for killing Banki, but his death still prompted Abu Musab’s outreach to the Scholarly Heritage Foundation. Nur also claimed Shekau shot Ba Gomna, who was among ISWAP’s liaisons to IS, before riding Gomna’s motorcycle and stating Gomna “never returned from battle.”175 Cameroonian politician Abba Malla, who was reportedly in Sambisa negotiating the Chibok girls’ release, saw Shekau kill Gomna, causing Malla to become ill and vow never to return to Shekau’s camp. Salafi scholars, including Ahmad Gumi and Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, consequently had little desire to engage Boko Haram after 2012, despite Shekau’s potential willingness to accept their mediation.176 Nur alleged Shekau actually killed Gomna because Gomna bought a house in Cameroon, which was reportedly with funds skimmed from the French family’s ransom. Malla had, perhaps inadvertently, told Shekau details about the ransom, allowing Shekau to calculate how much excess Bana Banki and Gomna kept.177 Nur also mentioned Shekau killed another commander because he discussed dreams about Muhammed Yusuf declaring the group would not win unless Shekau stopped capturing slaves.178 Shekau’s Stalinist purging of commanders was constant no matter how much disaffection it caused.

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Nur lastly mentioned Shekau’s insubordination because al-Baghdadi ordered ISWAP to only capture Christians as slaves, including most Chibok girls, but to kill Muslim men or women apostates, especially those serving the government, unless they repented.179 However, Shekau ignored al-Baghdadi and enslaved Muslim women civilians, including the several dozen Muslim Chibok girls. Shekau considered his Muslim captives to not be Muslims in the first place because they were born after the Sokoto caliphate’s fall and lived voluntarily among unbelievers outside ISWAP territories. As a result, Nur demanded Shekau repent for “refusing to follow the instruction of your leaders in Iraq” while Abu Fatima stated they reported everything to al-Baghdadi and sought “to bring sanity back to the religion” and although “reconciliation” was now impossible they did not desire to fight Shekau.180 Nur and Abu Fatima’s audio demonstrated Shekau and other top commanders maintained more frequent communication lines to al-Baghdadi than they did to Bin Laden from 2009 to 2011, which was consistent with ISWAP’s becoming a formal IS province, but never becoming an al-Qaeda affiliate, and with improvements in encrypted online communications in the years after Bin Laden’s death. Nur’s history with al-Qaeda and certain awareness of al-Qaeda’s criticisms of IS for extremism and killing civilians must have also required some cognitive dissonance to reconcile opposition to Shekau but loyalty to IS. Although Nur, like Abu Musab, acknowledged al-Baghdadi’s theologically legitimate claim as caliph, Nur might still have harbored concerns about IS hard-liners and maintained pro-al-Qaeda leanings. At the least, Nur and Abu Musab aligned with Abu Malek al-Tamimi and the subsequently purged Scholarly Heritage Foundation’s moderate IS theologians. They, therefore, would both be purged, too.181 Doctrinal and Mediatic Aspects of the Leadership Split Shekau responded to Abu Musab’s becoming ISWAP leader as he did to Mahamat Daud’s defection and the March 2016 “Surrender” video: by immediately posting, on August 4, a YouTube audio.182 Shekau stated he revived Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad and sent eight messages to al-Baghdadi but stopped receiving responses because Abu Musab cut off his communications with IS. This possibly occurred after the March 31 “Investigate” video, which was the last instance of Shekau loyalists’ contacting IS. Shekau also accused Abu Musab of murjism (postponing judgment on declaring takfir) because Abu Musab never declared takfir on Muslims voluntarily living outside ISWAP territories.183 This was, however, ironic because Abu Musab’s media team previously accused Izala of murjism and now Abu Musab was being denounced in this same way by Shekau.184 Shekau further rejected Abu Musab’s labeling him khawarij.185

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These ideological differences between Abu Musab and Shekau were exemplified by ISWAP’s attacks against internally displaced persons (IDPs) on Maiduguri’s outskirts, whom Shekau considered infidels for living among unbelievers and depending on Nigeria’s government and “Christian” aid organizations. However, Abu Musab believed IDPs, like civilians holding national identity cards, never demonstrated loyalty to national governments or “Christians” if they only needed food, medicine, and shelter to survive.186 Other disagreements, including that IS and Abu Musab objected to Shekau’s deploying children and female suicide bombers, further exacerbated tensions.187 On August 8, Boko Haram released another YouTube video, again not on IS social media platforms, featuring Man Chari, who Nur alleged collaborated with Shekau to kill commanders, including one who was advised by Nur to apologize to Shekau for “making a mistake” but was then shot by Chari.188 Lecturing dozens of fighters in a forested area, Chari asserted Boko Haram learned “suddenly” through the news that “someone without qualifications” became ISWAP leader, and Shekau outlined his positions on takfir in response to al-Baghdadi’s requests.189 However, Chari claimed Abu Musab cut off Shekau’s communications and although Shekau would not retract loyalty to al-Baghdadi, he would never work through intermediaries to IS again.190 Shekau, who was no longer facing media restrictions, then publicly appeared in a video for the first time since the March 2015 pledge with two armed fighters. He cursed Nigeria’s leaders, claimed to fight jihad in Nigeria, America, and the world, declared himself “imam of Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad in West Africa,” and shot his gun wildly in the air.191 Thus, his focus remained Nigeria and beyond, and he reconfirmed Boko Haram’s revival. In a December 2016 leaked audio from Shekau to his shura, he again confirmed returning the group to its original name and refusing to accept any doctrine that did not consider anyone living with unbelievers to not be infidels or that denied him the right to enslave women who participated in democracy.192 He also acknowledged that he coexisted with Nur to avoid showing signs of dissent and killed his spokesman Abu Zinnira for “conspiring” with Nur. Further, Shekau expressed disappointment about his broken computer printer.193 This reflected how Shekau considered life-anddeath issues about subcommanders and items as mundane as printers as equally relevant. Once liberated from IS- and Abu Musab–imposed media restrictions, Shekau could again print his usual blue-colored scripts and appear in videos. Thus, having a working printer was important. Shekau’s December 2016 shura audio and Nur’s August 2, 2016, audio mentioning Shekau’s hoarding electricity generators indicated Shekau lived with comforts from his Sambisa hideouts. Shekau even expressed concern about Nur’s planting tracking devices to kill him, but never mentioned

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Nigeria’s army.194 Thus, Shekau was suspicious about spies near him, but he lived without intense pressure from Nigeria’s army. He, therefore, could afford to possess such stationary items as printers and generators. Audios and videos surrounding ISWAP’s leadership split underscored how Shekau believed Abu Musab was too willing to excuse Muslims living outside ISWAP territories of infidelity while Abu Musab, like ISWAP’s former IS shaikh, Abu Malek al-Tamimi, believed Shekau’s declaring takfir on anyone outside ISWAP’s territories was excessive. The takfir issue, however, was decisive not only in the August 2016 leadership split but also when Shekau “hesitated” to pledge loyalty to al-Baghdadi before the February 9, 2015, shura meetings leading to agreement on the pledge to alBaghdadi.195 For example, in the week before the al-Urwa al-Wutqha Twitter account’s January 18, 2015, launch, Boko Haram released two Shekau video monologues on YouTube, which seemed unremarkable at the time. However, in retrospect they demonstrate how Shekau accepted IS orders pertaining to media and how disagreements over takfir undermined Shekau’s relations with Abu Musab. The first video monologue on January 13 featured Shekau’s praising “events at the newspaper in France,” referring to Charlie Hebdo, and the second video monologue on January 16 featured Shekau’s delivering a sermon called “Wannan ne Aqeedarmu” (“This Is Our Creed”), in which he stated “proof” for his position on takfir was his reliance on Ibn Taymiyya and Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab.196 Both videos also concluded by displaying a newly amended Boko Haram logo with Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad written in Arabic.197 This amended logo subsequently appeared in three February–March 2015 documents: first, the Boko Haram–al-Urwa al-Wutqha joint communiqué establishing the General Command, posted on al-Urwa al-Wutqha, which Abu Musab managed with Africa Media’s Abu Malek Shayba alHamad; second, Africa Media’s publication of archived correspondences from Boko Haram’s Abu Musab–led media team to Africa Media, and specifically al-Hamad; and, third, an Africa Media-published memoir, which featured Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia’s logo and the amended Boko Haram logo side-by-side, detailed Africa Media’s history with Boko Haram, and was almost certainly written by al-Hamad.198 Africa Media most likely amended the logo in those three documents so IS’s supporters who read Arabic would know Boko Haram’s real name was not Boko Haram but Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad. Although Shekau’s “Charlie Hebdo” and “This Is Our Creed” videos were both released in the week before Africa Media coordinated al-Urwa al-Wutqha’s January 18 launch with Abu Musab, the distinct amended logo in those two videos indicates they, too, were coordinated with Africa Media. As Shekau’s most vocal supporter in IS, al-Hamad presumably requested Boko Haram have Shekau discuss al-Qaeda’s Charlie Hebdo attack, which

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coincided with an IS-loyal Malian-Frenchman’s attack on a kosher restaurant in Paris, and clarify his position on takfir before al-Urwa al-Wutqha’s launch. This is why Boko Haram coordinated Shekau’s “Charlie Hebdo” and “This Is Our Creed” videos with Africa Media and featured the amended logo in both videos and Shekau mentioned in the latter video that “people need clarifications” on takfir.199 However, more than three weeks were still needed from the release of those two video monologues until the February 9, 2015, shura meetings for Shekau and Abu Musab to agree on Shekau’s making the pledge to al-Baghdadi so Shekau could appear in his first February 17 video on the al-Urwa al-Wutqha Twitter account and later pledge loyalty to al-Baghdadi in his March 7 audio on the Twitter account. The nonmention of Shekau on al-Urwa al-Wutqha from its January 18 launch until February 17 reflected that Abu Musab managed al-Urwa al-Wutqha and prevented references to Shekau until he agreed to pledge loyalty to al-Baghdadi at the February 9 shura meetings. As Nur indicated in the August 2, 2016, audio, Shekau agreed to make the pledge because of Abu Musab and Nur’s threats about making the pledge themselves and separating from him, like Ansaru attempted previously.200 Therefore, Shekau’s agreement to pledge loyalty to al-Baghdadi did not indicate a genuine meeting of the minds with Abu Musab on takfir. Rather, Shekau made the pledge under pressure, and disagreements on takfir muddled Shekau’s relationship with Abu Musab and Nur after the pledge. Moreover, after the pledge Abu Musab immediately requested further clarification about takfir from the IS shaikh, Abu Malek al-Tamimi, who agreed with Abu Musab, and Abu Musab and Nur later reported negatively about Shekau to IS. By 2016 not only was Abu Malek Shayba alHamad not with IS and unable to support Shekau, but also Abu Musab cut off Shekau’s communications to IS. As a result, IS agreed with Abu Musab’s positions on takfir and had no option but to work with him and designate him as leader because he still managed and monopolized ISWAP’s communications to IS. Shekau was uncharacteristically composed in his “Charlie Hebdo” and “This Is Our Creed” videos in the week before al-Urwa al-Wutqha’s January 18 launch and in his first February 17 video on al-Urwa al-Wutqha and his August and September 2015 ISWAP audio releases because he followed Africa Media, al-Urwa al-Wutqha, and IS media guidelines. In those three January–February 2015 videos, Shekau also addressed themes relevant to IS’s agenda, including Charlie Hebdo, takfir, and subregionalism and takfir again. However, Shekau’s claim in the February 17 video that anyone is an infidel for even doubting that “believers in democracy are infidels” and his threat to attack Muslims in mosques if they “opposed [Allah]” by voting in elections meant any mutual agreement with Abu Musab on takfir was fraught from even before ISWAP’s formation.201

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Moreover, Shekau was featured in his typical cinematographic setting in front of a lineup of fighters and acting maniacally in Boko Haram’s January 5, 2015, YouTube video threatening Paul Biya, the January 22, 2015, video claiming the Baga attack, and the February 9, 2015, video threatening leaders of Nigeria’s neighboring countries because those three videos were still produced by Shekau’s own Boko Haram media team.202 Therefore, those videos employed Boko Haram’s regular logo and Shekau faced no media restrictions and was free to be maniacal. In contrast, despite al-Hamad’s claiming to admire the “melody” of Shekau’s ululations and hyperbolic gun-shooting, which Shekau did in his January 5 and January 22 videos, the IS media guidelines imposed by Africa Media for the “Charlie Hebdo” and “This Is Our Creed” videos and imposed also by Abu Musab for the February 17 alUrwa al-Wutqha video meant those three videos were spared Shekau’s histrionics.203 Similarly, Shekau’s internal videos, including the one rejecting negotiations with Abu Muhammed Abdulaziz in 2012 and the “Message to Fulanis” in 2016, as well as Shekau’s December 2016 internal shura audio, featured a composed Shekau. This indicated Shekau’s histrionics were, in fact, largely theater and could be tempered when Shekau so desired. From an analytical standpoint, although ISWAP and Boko Haram have been, in Ahmed Salkida’s words, “one of the most vicious and secretive organizations in the world,” their opaqueness could be overcome through analyzing their videos’ content, branding, and release mechanisms, as well as their statements, communiqués, and ideological debates.204 In this case, the main factors behind ISWAP’s August 2016 leadership split were Abu Musab’s disagreements with Shekau about takfir compounded by Abu Musab’s monopolizing ISWAP’s communications with IS. Boko Haram 2.0 and the Chibok Girls’ Fate After the leadership split, ISWAP–Boko Haram clashes erupted. According to Abu Musab, ISWAP fighters led by Muhammed Bakr al-Barnawi, whom ISWAP eulogized in 2019, received orders from IS to support Abu Musab after Shekau’s fighters launched offensives against them around Lake Chad and in Yobe.205 ISWAP killed hundreds of Boko Haram members before the two groups finally concluded cease-fire agreements allowing fighters to choose to join either group. Many skilled and experienced fighters chose ISWAP, but Shekau called Abu Zinnira, who had been a longtime member and follower of Muhammed Yusuf, back to his camp because he saved videos Shekau did not want exposed.206 Shekau then shot Abu Zinnira and later mentioned this in his December 2016 audio. The split also created room to negotiate for the Chibok girls. Since Shekau’s May 5 and May 12, 2014, video claims, he only mentioned the girls to taunt the #BringBackOurGirls campaign pressuring Nigeria’s government

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to secure the girls’ freedom. For example, Shekau chanted in English “bring back our armyyyyy!” in his June 2014 Wuse bombing video claim and celebrated the girls’ six-month anniversary in captivity and conversions to Islam in his November 1, 2014, video.207 From the April 14, 2014, abduction until August 2016, the girls were only seen in unpublished proof-of-life videos provided by Abu Zinnira to mediators, including Ahmed Salkida.208 One such video, however, was given to CNN journalists and published on CNN’s website on the kidnapping’s two-year anniversary.209 A turning point occurred shortly after the leadership split on August 14, 2016, when Boko Haram released a video of a veiled militant, which was probably Abu Zinnira before his attempted defection, with around forty Chibok girls, including one holding a baby. He stated Boko Haram would only negotiate with “certain journalists,” referring to Salkida, claimed “forty girls” were married to fighters, and demanded Nigeria release “our brothers” from prison. He further asserted some girls were dead when the video revealed Boko Haram–filmed footage of an airplane in the sky and corpses of girls allegedly killed in airstrikes.210 This assertion was plausible because only one week later Nigeria announced its launching of airstrikes specifically on “Shekau’s camp” in Sambisa where Chibok girls were being held, which killed three commanders and reportedly “fatally wounded” Shekau, if not also others in the camp. 211 Nevertheless, in September 2016, Shekau resurfaced and mockingly demanded “bring back our brothers!” in a video posted on YouTube by user Abu Zinnira.212 Although Abu Zinnira was killed after this, his Gombe-born deputy nevertheless joined ISWAP, ran ISWAP’s Telegram account, and communicated with Salkida.213 That deputy, however, was later killed in Chibok and eulogized in IS’s “Caravan of Martyrs” series.214 Shekau indicated openness to negotiations through these videos while fighters tired of holding Chibok girls who refused marriage or conversion to Islam. Thus, Boko Haram finally negotiated with Swiss diplomats— whom Shekau mocked in his September video alongside John Kerry and Ban Ki-moon—and their facilitators, Fulan Nasrullah and Zanna Mustapha, and Salkida to exchange twenty-one and eighty-two girls on October 16, 2016, and May 6, 2017, respectively, for five Boko Haram prisoners and a multimillion-dollar ransom.215 The girls who were not released were nonnegotiable Boko Haram “wives” and mothers of fighters’ children desiring to remain with Boko Haram. This was demonstrated by two additional videos of the Chibok girls. The first video, on May 13, 2017, featured four veiled girls with a rifle declaring they would not return home and urging their parents to join Boko Haram.216 The second video, in January 2018, featured Shekau declaring the Chibok girls converted to Islam and twenty veiled Chibok girls, including some with babies, “thanking our father, Abubakar Shekau, for marrying us to our husbands”; ten other abducted

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women pleading for President Buhari and Nigeria’s army to save them like the Chibok girls; and Boko Haram–filmed combat footage, including a destroyed air force plane and unmanned aerial vehicle (drone).217 The narrative from these videos was that the remaining Chibok girls wanted to stay with Boko Haram despite suffering Stockholm syndrome symptoms218 and that Boko Haram was willing to exchange other abducted women. These two videos also helped Shekau prove continued negotiations for the remaining Chibok girls were futile, which Zanna Mustapha asserted to mediators.219 Mustapha knew Shekau before 2009 and was trusted by Shekau, who “helped” Mustapha by confirming Mustapha was not “abandoning” the girls by halting negotiations.220 The negotiations also demonstrated Boko Haram had centralized command and control with Shekau at the top of the hierarchy and revealed Shekau’s “diplomatic” side, also seen in his 2010 thank-you letter to Abu Zeid. For example, Shekau helped Mustapha not only by releasing videos of the remaining Chibok girls but also by providing one extra girl as a “gift” to Mustapha in the October 2016 exchange.221 This was because Mustapha cared for Boko Haram leaders’ children, including orphans of deceased fighters, at his Maiduguri school, whose educational system respected Boko Haram members’ wives’ demands to avoid aspects of Western education while still accommodating Christian students orphaned by Boko Haram.222 Boko Haram also could not resist taunting Nigeria’s government after the second May 2017 exchange. The group, for example, released a video of five members freed from prison in the exchanges, including Shuaibu Moni, who reportedly masterminded female suicide bombings, denying peace prospects and mocking government “lies” about not paying ransom money to Boko Haram.223 Appearing in another March 2018 Boko Haram video, Moni called Nigerian officials liars for falsely claiming they recaptured Sambisa.224 One month later, in April 2018, Ahmed Salkida announced he learned from Boko Haram only around thirty Chibok girls with Boko Haram were still alive and they were “wives” of fighters.225 This meant ten of the forty girls Abu Zinnira claimed were married to Boko Haram fighters in August 2016 likely died by April 2018 and that in total 103 Chibok girls were released by Boko Haram in exchanges and around 100 girls died in captivity in the four years after approximately 230 girls were taken to Boko Haram’s “Timbuktu” camp near Sambisa in April 2014.226 From 2018 onward, Boko Haram attacks were mostly around Sambisa in southern Borno, northern Adamawa, and Borno’s borderlands with Cameroon, although by late 2019 Boko Haram activated cells around Maiduguri and especially Lake Chad. Shekau never retracted loyalty to alBaghdadi because this would actually make him khawarij and cause fighters to question his legitimacy.227 Contrarily, Shekau consistently implied

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Boko Haram was still an IS province by playing with words and declaring Boko Haram was “in West Africa in the Islamic state.”228 The Boko Haram media team’s Arabic, Hausa, and, to a lesser extent, French videos, attack claims, and statements also plagiarized IS’s fonts, colors, graphics, and logos and even IS’s “Caravan of Martyrs” series, despite Boko Haram’s no longer being an IS province.229 Boko Haram, therefore, self-identified as a legitimate, but wrongly demoted, IS province. IS also never denounced Boko Haram’s plagiarism or explicitly announced Shekau’s demotion; it only announced Abu Musab’s ascension to ISWAP leadership in August 2016. This meant Boko Haram members could conceivably view themselves as an alternate IS entity. Although Man Chari surfaced in two Boko Haram videos leading September 2016 and July 2017 Eid al-Fitr prayers for around 1,000 and 500 men, respectively, in a mosque and a field, he never reappeared again.230 Shekau indicated in his December 2016 audio that Mamman Nur “removed” Chari from the shura before the leadership split, which Shekau accepted, and Chari departed Shekau’s camp.231 Chari was finally reported killed in August 2017 Nigerian air force strikes, perhaps resulting from leaving the security of Shekau’s camps.232 Boko Haram later eulogized Chari in 2019, revealing he was from Bama and implying he died on good terms with the group.233 Shekau also continued taunting President Buhari and ordering female suicide bombings after the leadership split, justifying the latter “if needs arise” when claiming a 2017 suicide bombing reportedly launched by a teenage girl at University of Maiduguri’s mosque that killed four people.234 However, defections of skilled bomb-makers to ISWAP and Shekau’s killing other bomb-makers suggests why Boko Haram deployed female suicide bombers less frequently starting in 2018. Shekau also claimed in 2018 that enslaving women followed “God’s instructions” and was retaliation for Nigeria’s government “taking captive our wives, children, and friends for years and mistreating them.”235 Thus, his theological positions on women captives and female suicide bombers remained unchanged. Despite Boko Haram attacks and Chari’s death, the group remained relatively secure. Shekau was never captured or fatally injured ten years after succeeding Muhammed Yusuf, nor were any Chibok girls found or rescued aside from two or three girls who reportedly wandered from Boko Haram camps and the 103 girls released in negotiated exchanges. The estimated seven hundred other Muslim and Christian women reportedly abducted by Boko Haram as of 2019, who were considered unbelievers for voluntarily living outside Boko Haram territories, remained in custody with escapes, rescues, or exchanges infrequently occurring.236 Shekau also remained informed of current affairs from his hideouts. He, for example, responded to the November 2016 US presidential election

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by calling Donald Trump “a homosexual” and Hillary Clinton “a prostitute.”237 Two years later, he claimed “God will judge” his relationship with his mother after Voice of America interviewed her about Shekau’s “brainwashing” under Yusuf.238 Shekau’s videos in 2019 also indicated his creed remained unchanged and he would never compromise his theology. For example, in June 2019, Shekau reaffirmed that “whoever participates in democracy is an infidel” and “accepting unbelievers as protectors . . . is clear apostasy” in a probable reference to Muslims in IDP camps.239 Like before 2009 when Shekau played an old audio recording of Shaikh Jaafar’s denouncing democracy and used it to expose Shaikh Jaafar’s alleged hypocrisy when he later advocated working within democratic institutions, Shekau also released a September 2019 video citing US-educated MSS cofounder and former Nigerian minister of education, Babs Fafunwa, who once argued boko created “colonial dependency,” despite Fafunwa’s advocating education, especially in indigenous languages, as a means for liberation.240 Similar to Ibrahim al-Zakzaky’s 1980 Funtua Declaration claiming Nigerian Muslims succumbed to their own exploitation by supporting unIslamic governments, Shekau implied Fafunwa and other Nigerian Muslim leaders were hypocrites for supporting Nigerian political and educational institutions, despite their boko foundations. Shekau concluded that video by affirming he was “imam” of Boko Haram in “West Africa in the Islamic state,” jumping around with a mega-sized miswak and shooting his gun, and declaring, “I’m gun crazy!”241 His histrionics persisted. Weeks later, Shekau released an audio denouncing “malignant” (khabith) Bulama Bukarti, who is a Kanuri from Yobe, former BUK law professor, and London-based Tony Blair Institute for Global Change analyst. Shekau accused him of “staying with Westerners,” reminded him Boko Haram was waging jihad to establish an Islamic state based on Salafi interpretation of Quran and sunna, and warned him he will “never know peace” again.242 Bukarti caught Boko Haram’s attention when tweeting after Shekau’s video mentioning Babs Fafunwa that Shekau “misinterprets Islamic texts and quotes Muslim scholars and authors out of context,” including Fafunwa and another BUK lecturer, Sanusi Iguda, whose book, Dafin Boko Da Maganinsa (“The Poison of Boko and its Solution”), Shekau held and mentioned in the video.243 Indeed, after the July 2009 clashes Iguda clarified his book praised Islam’s contributions to science and “vehemently opposed” the view that Western-style education is haram.244 Shekau, similarly, responded to Isa Ali Pantami’s February 2020 statement about terrorists’ using social media by threatening Pantami and Bukarti again and reminding them what Boko Haram did to Shaikh Jaafar. Ahmed Salkida asserted Shekau’s responses to Pantami and Bukarti, whose tweets only received around 60 “likes,” reflected Shekau’s “sensitivity to criticism” even though Boko Haram was no longer competing for

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Muslims’ hearts and minds in the surrounding, mainstream Muslim environment in Nigeria like it was during Muhammed Yusuf’s time.245 Boko Haram’s November 2019 videos also featured Shekau lecturing with his typical blue scripts and discussing the impermissibility of Shias’ celebrating Prophet Muhammad’s birthday (mawlid), condemning Ibrahim al-Zakzaky and Iran’s leadership, and declaring Boko Haram as al-ta‘ifa al-mansura (“the victorious sect”) and al-firqa al-najiya (“the saved sect”).246 His Christmas Day 2019 video further asserted Jesus was not the son of God, and in January 2020 he returned to mocking the Nigerian Constitution’s impermissibility in heavily accented English, like he did before July 2009.247 These discourses did not reflect topical Islamic debates in Nigeria, but rather Shekau’s preaching to his own tune. Shekau also continued condemning ISWAP’s murjism, while ISWAP’s post–March 2019 leadership, including Ba Idrisa, like Ansaru’s Abu Muslim al-Ibrahimi, urged Shekau to adopt moderate (wasitiyya) positions and stop being like early Islam’s “renegades” (mariqun). 248 These were indications Shekau was unchangeable but not facing severe pressure, especially with Nigeria’s army mostly combating the greater threat, ISWAP. Moreover, Boko Haram had enough supplies, including spoils from northern Adamawa, Maiduguri’s outskirts, and Kolofata, Cameroon, to feed “Shekau’s army,” including abductees and children.249 The group’s hundreds of “cubs” born after 2009, who would be ready to fight by the 2020s, were bound to become Shekau’s new generation of loyalists. Boko Haram, therefore, remained a Shekau-centric and Sambisa-based group living similarly to, but on a much larger scale and with significantly more arms than, Kanama camp members, including maintaining the group’s own hisba.250 Boko Haram’s 2016, 2017, and 2018 Eid al-Fitr videos also indicated the group had hundreds, if not several thousands, of fighters.251 Although Boko Haram’s 2019 Eid al-Fitr video featured only around four hundred worshippers and the group’s other videos in 2019 featured more child soldiers wearing rag-tag clothing than previous years, the group remained lethal and, according to documents found on a senior commander killed in Cameroon in 2019, there were still fighters who joined the group as early as 2002.252 Boko Haram’s mostly young Borno-born Kanuri fighters nevertheless were incomparable to professionally uniformed well-built men from diverse Nigerian states seen in ISWAP videos and photostreams and in photographs of slain ISWAP fighters published by the Nigerian army.253 IS-style symbolism in post–August 2016 Boko Haram videos indicated Shekau never closed the door on rejoining IS or the global jihadist movement into which Shekau formally entered Boko Haram.254 Indeed, a November 2018 post on Boko Haram’s Telegram account by a user with an Iraqi alias coincided with Boko Haram’s promotion of a new media agency, at-Tibyan, whose logo resembled that of IS’s al-Hayah media agency, Boko Haram’s

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release of videos with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Abu Muhammed alAdnani iconography, and the Boko Haram Telegram account’s promotion of a nasheed-oriented media foundation whose lyrics focused on living in Dar al-Islam and replicated an IS nasheed-oriented media foundation’s logo.255 This indicated Boko Haram’s media team maintained some contacts to jihadists abroad. However, Boko Haram–ISWAP reconciliation would require Shekau’s return to ISWAP leadership and while there were signs after August 2016 that ISWAP hard-liners tended toward ideologically “Shekau-like” leaders, there were few signs of interest from ISWAP or IS in Shekau himself returning to the IS fold. Therefore, Shekau was more organizationally isolated than in previous years, but there were enough Shekau loyalists in Boko Haram, if not also sympathizers among ISWAP hard-liners or defectors and Shekau-loyal Lake Chad–based jihadists, for Boko Haram to maintain longterm sustainability. Nevertheless, ISWAP and Boko Haram evolved into two jihadist organizations with distinct leadership structures, ideologies, and operational areas after the August 2016 leadership split while always sharing common origins as one “jihadist family.” ISWAP After the Leadership Split After the leadership split, virtually all ISWAP attacks were in northern Borno, eastern Yobe, southeastern Niger, and around Lake Chad, including in Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. However, in central Borno near Cameroon’s border, including Rann, and southern Borno, including Chibok, and even northern Adamawa, as well as around Lake Chad, ISWAP and Boko Haram began overlapping by 2020. This was because ISWAP was expanding throughout Borno but ISWAP hard-liners or defectors and autonomous Lake Chad–based jihadists began tending toward Shekau’s ideology and tactics and loyalty to him.256 Despite occasional territorial overlap, formal ISWAP–Boko Haram cooperation was rare and clashes still occurred. Also after the leadership split, ISWAP decreased suicide bombings and conducted them almost exclusively on military targets, especially during battles.257 ISWAP also no longer deployed female suicide bombers and, like Ansaru members near Bauchi’s Mundu village in 2015, ISWAP members were known for conversing with, and purchasing supplies from, merchants.258 Boko Haram, in contrast, looted markets and targeted civilian women, including cutting Cameroonian women’s ears and demanding they deliver them to Cameroon’s army and slicing their breasts.259 Therefore, civilians referred to ISWAP as “[Abu Musab] al-Barnawi’s faction” or “Mamman Nur’s men” and viewed their fighters as professionals and civilian-friendly, at least until Nur’s March 2018 purging and Abu Musab’s March 2019 demotion. ISWAP also remained faithful to IS theology, providing religious instruction to civilians based on IS books and sermons.260

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Additionally, after the leadership split ISWAP no longer held large towns because it could not withstand Nigeria’s army or air force in conventional warfare. This conformed with IS advice to provinces to launch hit-and-run raids, especially at night, to steal spoils and execute enemies before withdrawing when superior military forces responded.261 ISWAP thus predominated in rural areas, spied on soldiers, pilfered high-grade weapons, cut off military logistics routes, and demoralized Nigerians by releasing propaganda videos of successful attacks and dead soldiers.262 ISWAP’s strategy was vindicated when constant ambushes forced Nigeria’s army to withdraw forces from Maiduguri to Damasak near Niger’s border in August 2019, leaving a 100-mile roadway open for ISWAP to invade two towns north of Maiduguri, Magumeri and Gubio, where fighters prayed, destroyed government buildings and emirs’ palaces, and stole gas, medicine, and other supplies before retreating. This occurred despite Borno’s compassionate new governor, Babagana Zulum, who was formerly a professor in Maiduguri, assuring townspeople of the military’s commitment to securing those towns.263 One month later, in September 2019, ISWAP similarly entered Tarmuwa local government area’s headquarters, Babangida, in Yobe and burned the emir’s palace. However, unlike Kanama camp members, this time fighters reportedly stayed in Babangida to “exchange pleasantries” with civilians.264 This indicated there was some popular support for ISWAP. Meanwhile, ISWAP also raised funds through taxing industries, especially fishing, rice, dried meat, and pepper trades along Lake Chad, causing Nigeria to ineffectively attempt to ban those trades and, if anything, alienate traders when their goods were taxed by ISWAP but then seized and destroyed by the army.265 Unlike Boko Haram videos after the leadership split that showed sharia beheadings and other punishments, ISWAP released videos and photostreams featuring combat against Nigeria’s army or hisba patrols inspecting markets and assisting farmers, at least until Abu Musab’s March 2019 demotion.266 These videos’ narratives reflected ISWAP’s “hearts and minds” approach mentioned in the Abu Musab–led media team’s November 22, 2014, correspondence to Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad.267 The 2018 ISWAP video eulogizing Abu Fatima also called him an “Islamic hero” and “poison for Shekau’s khawarij” while featuring clips of him smiling with cofighters.268 The same video featured interviews of herders and farmers, including one speaking according to script but still asserting “it is a lie [ISWAP] confiscates people’s wealth,” which distanced ISWAP from accusations made against Shekau by, among others, Abu Muslim al-Ibrahimi in his 2011 treatise.269 Another August 2016 battle video was dedicated to “brothers in Libya province,” perhaps as gratitude for Libya-based IS members’ assistance in naming Abu Musab as leader earlier that month.270

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Therefore, ISWAP demonstrated it departed from Shekau’s ways, despised Shekau, remained loyal to IS, and wanted that publicized. Nevertheless, ISWAP’s implementation of certain IS directives and ISWAP leadership changes from March 2018 to March 2019 that reduced Mamman Nur’s and Abu Musab’s power resulted in ISWAP sometimes acting more harshly than Boko Haram. In March 2018, for example, ISWAP attacked Rann’s military base along Borno’s border with Cameroon, killing three aid workers and eight soldiers. The group also captured two young female Muslim aid workers from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and a third female aid worker and mother of two children from UNICEF, Alice Ngaddah. ISWAP then shot to death the two female ICRC aid workers in September and October 2018 because they were considered Muslim apostates serving Nigeria’s government by working inside military-protected zones.271 However, ISWAP’s video of a fighter shooting one of the girls, which featured him wearing an IS-style uniform, standing beside an IS black-and-white flag, and claiming to be implementing Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s orders, was not released publicly.272 This might have been because IS media guidelines discouraged showing shootings of women even when IS approved their punishments. ISWAP commanders also kidnapped 110 Muslim girls and one Christian girl from a school in Dapchi, Yobe, in February 2018 in a seeming Chibok repeat. However, in March 2018 agreements were reached with Nigerian authorities through intermediaries to allow ISWAP’s convoy to return the Muslim girls through a “safe corridor” to Dapchi where villagers applauded ISWAP.273 One ISWAP commander stated in a shura audio that IS ordered ISWAP to return the girls but demand they repent for receiving Western education and living among unbelievers. IS believed the Dapchi girls were apostates, but the operation hurt ISWAP’s reputation and the girls neither actively opposed ISWAP nor apostatized by showing loyalty (al-wala) to the government and military like the two female Muslim ICRC aid workers did.274 An Ansaru user on Facebook also criticized ISWAP for resembling Shekau by abducting the Dapchi girls and reminded ISWAP that IS had stated that Muslim apostates could be killed or spared, but not enslaved, and that an Iraqi IS member published a fatwa arguing that receiving boko was not haram and enslaving students was impermissible.275 Thus, the Muslim Dapchi girls’ being spared was consistent with IS’s directives. ISWAP, however, could not return five girls to Dapchi who suffocated to death in trucks during the initial operation, and continued holding the lone Christian girl, Leah Sharibu, because she refused conversion to Islam and her father was a police officer. ISWAP later announced UNICEF’s Alice Ngaddah and Sharibu would remain as “slaves for life” because they were Christians and that ISWAP would “do whatever we want to do with them.”276 This also conformed to IS directives to ISWAP about slavery

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mentioned by Mamman Nur in his August 2, 2016, audio: Christians could become slaves, but Muslim men and women apostates could only be killed, especially if they served the government, or they could be released if they repented.277 Also demonstrating ISWAP’s popular support were reports from released Dapchi girls that Sharibu and several girls once escaped from ISWAP’s camp near Lake Chad, but Fulani nomads found them and returned them to the camp where “the Khalifa,” believed to be Abu Musab, lectured them. He told them “not to go back to Nigeria” and advised them to bring their parents to the “Islamic caliphate,” but assured them of their future release.278 This, however, was not the case for Sharibu. By ISWAP’s March 2018 release of the Dapchi girls and Rann attack, IS lost virtually all its territories in Iraq and was losing its Syrian territories. With IS’s Libyan territories also lost, except portions in Fezzan, southern Libya, ISWAP became IS’s most viable province with tamkin. If Abu Musab or Nur were to become disloyal and renounce loyalty to al-Baghdadi or realign with Ansaru or al-Qaeda-loyal groups in Mali that were rapidly reviving several years after Operation Serval, then IS’s credibility would be damaged. This might suggest why IS reshaped ISWAP leadership’s internal organization by purging Nur in March 2018, which led to the sidelining of Abu Musab until his own demotion from leadership one year later. Although Nur followed IS orders by releasing the Dapchi girls in March 2018, IS suspected he was less committed than other ISWAP commanders. This may have been because, like Abu Musab, Nur was initially motivated to pledge loyalty to al-Baghdadi for reasons mentioned in Abu Iyad al-Tunisi’s letter to al-Zawahiri, including moderating ISWAP and sidelining Shekau. Moreover, unlike ISWAP’s younger generation, Nur had previous affinity for, and long-standing relationships with, al-Qaeda.279 Abu Musab also avoided anti-al-Qaeda polemics while leading the Boko Haram and ISWAP media teams and referenced positively Boko Haram’s former “strong ties” to AQIM in his June 2018 book.280 The book, which was published by ISWAP’s al-Haqaiq (The Truths) media agency and may not have been intended for IS leadership but primarily ISWAP and Boko Haram fighters using Telegram internally, also explicitly acknowledged the “allegiance to the caliph was for eradicating [Shekau’s] tumor.” 281 This implied Abu Musab had ulterior motives and his priority was sidelining Shekau more than loyalty to al-Baghdadi when Boko Haram joined IS in March 2015. Abu Musab further implicitly referenced al-Qaeda positively in his August 3, 2016, al-Naba interview, and in his book he explicitly referenced Ansaru positively, including requesting that God free imprisoned Ansaru members “captured by the apostate government.”282 Abu Musab’s and Nur’s pro-al-Qaeda tendencies after the IS pledge and the “suspicious” Scholarly Heritage Foundation’s March 2018 publication of “Nigerian

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Questions,” which represented the moderate theological current in IS, might have all contributed to IS’s concluding that Nur and Abu Musab were unreliable and potential collaborators with al-Qaeda, especially after IS’s fortunes declined in Iraq and Syria and al-Qaeda’s rose in the Sahel. This would have required their removal from ISWAP leadership. According to a Kanuri-language ISWAP shura audio leaked in September 2018, ISWAP claimed Nur received money from Nigerian authorities during the Dapchi negotiations. This was “proof” Nur made side deals for personal gain and was planning to negotiate cease-fires or additional hostage exchanges.283 ISWAP hard-liners used those allegations to justify placing Nur and his loyalists under house arrest from March 2018 onward, despite the relatively small amount of funds Nur received being useful only for feeding the Dapchi girls and paying expenses to return them to Dapchi and not for self-enrichment.284 Nur also knew he was a US-designated terrorist and could not easily return to society with funds even if he surrendered.285 Therefore, although it is unlikely Nur would have entered politics like Mokhtar Robow did in Somalia after Robow retired from jihad, especially because Nigeria, unlike Somalia, does not enshrine sharia as the basis for national legislation, the political option was closed for Nur. According to the shura audio, Nur escaped house arrest but was recaptured by ISWAP commanders in Kangarwa, near Lake Chad, which ISWAP eventually captured in November 2018.286 Alleging Nur intended to surrender, ISWAP asked Abubakar al-Baghdadi through encrypted online communications whether Nur should be killed, detained, or released. Al-Baghdadi ordered the group to kill Nur.287 Although ISWAP confirmed Abu Musab was still the leader in the September 2018 shura audio, Nur’s death empowered ISWAP hard-liners who subsequently sidelined Abu Musab and eventually removed him from leadership in March 2019. Similar to Shekau, however, they dared not kill Abu Musab because he was Muhammed Yusuf’s son. Nur’s purging and Abu Musab’s demotion might also explain ISWAP’s unprecedented killing of the two female Muslim ICRC aid workers in September and October 2018 on IS orders because the first killing occurred only three days after Nur was reported killed. Had Nur and Abu Musab been in power, they might have resisted those orders and spared those two women if they repented to preserve ISWAP’s reputation and win “hearts and minds” among civilians in its dawla. As a result of increasingly frequent IS-ISWAP communications starting around Nur’s March 2018 house arrest, IS could advise ISWAP on organizational and military matters, including new methods for raiding military barracks, if not also using drones and building improvised armored vehicles, the latter an IS craft honed through years fighting in Iraq and Syria and employed by ISWAP starting in 2018.288 The first major military barracks to fall after Nur’s house arrest were near Dapchi, in Jilli, Yobe, where more than one

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hundred soldiers were killed in July 2018. Days before this, twenty-three soldiers were killed in an ambush near Bama, Borno.289 At least forty soldiers were also killed when the Metele, Borno, barracks near Niger’s border fell in November 2018.290 Finally, on December 28, Baga’s multinational military base fell, with dozens of soldiers and CJTF members killed. Like the Abu Musab–led media team fighters entering Gombe city on February 14, 2015, the ISWAP fighters in Baga warned civilians against voting in Nigeria’s impending February 2019 elections.291 This exemplified how, since the June 2016 Bosso and Diffa raids, ISWAP became empowered around Lake Chad, northern Borno, and northern Yobe and expert in barracks raids. ISWAP’s first video after the Baga raid featured combat footage, fighters renewing their pledges to Abubakar al-Baghdadi, a lecture by a Sokoto-born anti-aircraft gun operator about hijra to ISWAP’s “Islamic state” (daular musulunci) where proper sharia is implemented, and a seemingly bearded Caucasian fighter with a distinct green uniform and skilled gait when shooting.292 This lent credence to civilian reports that IS sent some fighters of diverse ethnicities to ISWAP from Libya or farther abroad.293 Such exchanges between ISWAP and IS members who were in Libya would have allowed IS to manage ISWAP affairs more closely, including when purging Nur, and to advise ISWAP militarily, resulting in ISWAP’s increased attack tempo.294 The trend was as Nur and Abu Musab became less influential from March 2018 onward, ISWAP became more militarily effective, indicating Abu Musab and Nur were hoping for cease-fires or reductions in hostilities, perhaps to concentrate on developing ISWAP’s dawla, and were limiting ISWAP’s confrontations with Nigeria’s military. Although Chadian forces supported Nigerian troops to disperse ISWAP from some strongholds near Lake Chad in 2019, ISWAP was still able to overrun military barracks throughout Borno that year, including in Biu in April; Magumeri in May; and Kareto, Dikwa, and Marte in June–July. The Marte raid was reportedly commanded by an ISWAP fighter who trained with IS members in Libya when IS controlled Sirte, and his two subcommanders trained in Fezzan, southern Libya, after IS lost Sirte.295 These constant barracks raids demoralized Nigerian soldiers and families notified belatedly about the deaths of their fathers, husbands, and brothers and eventually forced Nigeria’s military to abandon poorly constructed and lightly defended barracks in Borno for better fortified “supercamps” that surrounded large towns and IDP camps in August 2019.296 Air force strikes on ISWAP’s camps increased after this. However, tracts of rural Borno were ceded to ISWAP, and incursions into mid-size towns immediately followed, including Magumeri and Gubio, whose populations are both around 100,000 people, and Babangida, Yobe. Moreover, roadway ambushes increased, including by ISWAP fighters deceptively disguised as Nigerian soldiers, wearing captured helmets, boots, and uniforms and using military vehicles.297

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Besides barracks raids, Nigeria’s February 2019 presidential election also exposed difficulties in containing ISWAP. Voting occurred throughout most of Borno and accommodations were made for IDPs, and Muhammadu Buhari won a second presidential term. However, ISWAP, which began firing rockets in 2014 and developed its own workshops for rocket-building by 2015, possibly with IS support, unsettled Maiduguri residents hours before voting by firing rockets toward Maiduguri’s airport that were seemingly pilfered from the Baga raid.298 The group also killed and captured dozens of passengers when its fighters wearing military camouflage and in military vehicles ambushed then Borno governor Kashim Shettima’s hundred-vehicle convoy days before the election on the Gamboru-Maiduguri road.299 Weeks later ISWAP again fired rockets toward Diffa, Niger, attempting to neutralize its airbase, whose strategic importance for Western forces was highlighted by Abu Musab in his August 3, 2016, al-Naba interview.300 Ten years after Muhammed Yusuf’s death, the “guerrilla war” Yusuf envisioned raged stronger than ever, and youths born into the post–July 2009 war, including Yusuf’s own grandchildren, were almost fighting age even though Nur was purged, Abu Musab was sidelined, and Shekau transgressed Yusuf’s creed. ISWAP in Regional Context ISWAP’s barracks raids and ambushes demonstrated that elite fighters were mostly with ISWAP and not Boko Haram, including those returning to Nigeria after fighting with MUJWA and Belmokhtar-led Katibat al-Mulathamin in 2012 and IS in Libya in 2015. Two former MUJWA commanders, Hamadou Kheiry and Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, also became IS-loyal.301 While Kheiry was killed in US airstrikes in Libya in 2017, al-Sahrawi became leader of the group known as Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS), operating in the tri-border region of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. This is where ISGS conducted the March 2017 ambush in Tongo Tongo, Niger that killed four US Special Forces members and four soldiers from Niger. Al-Sahrawi coclaimed the May 2013 northern Niger bombings with Belmokhtar and cofounded a new group, al-Murabitun, with Belmokhtar in August 2013. Al-Murabitun merged Katibat al-Mulathamin with alSahrawi’s MUJWA fighters and Ahmed al-Tilemsi’s MUJWA Osama bin Laden brigade, but not Sultan Ould Bady’s MUJWA Salah al-Din brigade, which incorporated some Ansar al-Din fighters, claimed several major attacks in Mali in 2013, and became an independent brigade in 2014, ending MUJWA’s existence. However, al-Sahrawi and Belmokhtar split when al-Sahrawi attempted to become al-Murabitun’s emir in 2015. This occurred after al-Murabitun’s first emir, Abubakar al-Muhajir (al-Masri), who was a 1980s and post-9/11 Egyptian Afghan jihad veteran originally sent by al-Qaeda Central to Mali to reconcile Belmokhtar with AQIM, and

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second emir, Ahmed al-Tilemsi, were killed by French forces in Mali in April 2014 and December 2014, respectively.302 Former Katibat alMulathamin members opposed al-Sahrawi’s becoming emir because he was too ideologically unsophisticated and Belmokhtar and al-Sahrawi had initially agreed that neither of them would become emir.303 As a result, alSahrawi announced his loyalty to IS in May 2015 in al-Murabitun’s name. This was nearly one year after Hamadou Kheiry already pledged loyalty to al-Baghdadi, but Kheiry never joined al-Murabitun because he rejected Abubakar al-Muhajir’s leadership from the start.304 Belmokhtar denounced al-Sahrawi’s pledge to IS while affirming his loyalty to Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, albeit not AQIM leaders.305 Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad’s last May 2015 tweets before going silent until resurfacing in Syria, therefore, accurately confirmed “al-Sahrawi’s group” pledged loyalty to IS, which Africa Media facilitated, but Belmokhtar rejected that pledge and “announced his loyalty to al-Qaeda.”306 However, Belmokhtar went into deep hiding or was killed after 2015.307 Al-Sahrawi left al-Murabitun, which meant the missing-in-action Belmokhtar ostensibly led al-Murabitun. Al-Sahrawi thereafter formed ISGS and received formal recognition from IS after ISGS’s first two attacks on Burkinabe customs posts in September and October 2016.308 However, similar to Abu Sayyaf’s IS-recognized successors in the Philippines, IS declared ISGS fighters as IS’s “soldiers in Niger” (jenood fi Niger) and IS’s own “Katibat al-Murabitun,” but IS never granted ISGS “province” status.309 Despite the nearly one thousand mile geographic distance between ISGS and ISWAP core operational areas in the Mali-Niger-Burkina Faso tri-border region and Lake Chad subregion, respectively, on March 22, 2019, IS began claiming ISGS operations in ISWAP’s name.310 This indicated ISWAP referred not only to itself as a group but also literally to IS’s administrative unit for “West Africa” such that all IS West Africa–based IS attacks, including in the Sahel, northwestern Nigeria, and Lake Chad subregion, were attributed to ISWAP. ISGS, or specifically IS’s “soldiers in Niger” and IS’s “Katibat al-Murabitun,” therefore, became subsumed by ISWAP. However, intelligence reports about Abu Musab’s “directing” ISGS to extend IS influence into Mali and Burkina Faso and al-Sahrawi’s “anchoring” himself in those two countries’ Fulani communities by marrying a Fulani woman from a Mali-Niger border town surfaced as early as March 2017. According to such reports, IS’s Iraqi trainers also were in Adamawa, Nigeria for six months in 2016, which would have coincided with ISWAP’s August 2016 leadership split.311 Nevertheless, as discussed subsequently, Abu Musab was dethroned on March 4, 2019, shortly before ISWAP’s incorporation of ISGS became official. Possibilities for actual ISWAP-ISGS operational coordination depended on ISWAP’s establishing cells in northwestern Nigeria and ISGS fighters’

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migrating several hundred miles from the Mali-Niger-Burkina Faso tri-border region into northwestern Nigeria, which, according to the UN, began occurring in 2019.312 ISWAP’s claim in al-Naba newsletter in October 2019 that it launched attacks on Nigerian soldiers in Sokoto from a base across the border in Niger also indicated ISWAP activated cells in northwestern Nigeria and was overlapping with ISGS elements and Ansaru in that region.313 One month later, in November 2019, ISGS conducted a major military barracks raid in Indelimane, Mali, killing around 50 soldiers.314 The raid was led by Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi’s fellow Western Saharan deputy, Abdelhakim alSahrawi, who announced implementation of sharia during Ramadan in 2012 in Gao, Mali and oversaw sharia punishments there; like Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, he was originally involved with the anti-Moroccan Polisario Front.315 The Indelimane raid was followed by another December 11, 2019, ISGS barracks raid in Inates, Niger, killing around seventy soldiers.316 Those two raids and ISGS’s December 24, 2019, Arbinda, Burkina Faso barracks raid, which killed thirty-five civilians and seven soldiers, and ISGS’s January 9, 2020, Chinagodrar, Niger barracks raid, which killed 100 soldiers, were, however, all claimed in ISWAP’s name and resembled ISWAP’s raids in Jilli and Metele in 2018, especially the firing of rockets before the raids occurred.317 This suggested ISWAP and ISGS might be exchanging tactics, if not also personnel, albeit ISGS’s mostly using motorcycles and ISWAP’s mostly using sport-utility vehicles with mounted weapons. Al-Baghdadi’s request for God to protect Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi in an April 2019 video, which was al-Baghdadi’s first video appearance since his June 2014 caliphate declaration, indicated al-Sahrawi was in IS’s fold and respected by IS and resulted in an immediate, and likely not coincidental, upsurge in ISGS attacks that climaxed with the Indelimane, Inates, Arbinda, and Chinagodrar raids.318 Because IS envisioned ISWAP and ISGS becoming one group in ISWAP’s name, al-Sahrawi and other ISGS commanders, including Abdelhakim al-Sahrawi, would presumably have to accept ISWAP’s preexisting Nigerian leadership, just as Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi had accepted Egyptian and Malian leadership over al-Murabitun previously.319 If this occurred, both al-Sahrawis would truly empower subSaharan African jihadists, which MUJWA’s 2011 formation ostensibly intended. Nevertheless, al-Baghdadi’s special recognition of Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi and MUJWA’s empowering few sub-Saharan African jihadists indicated both al-Sahrawis might be reluctant to accept Nigerian leadership over ISWAP. Complicating the Sahelian jihadist map, however, were ISGS operations alongside al-Qaeda-loyal and 2017-founded Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam walMuslimin (JNIM), which operated in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, and Sahelian bandits.320 One such operation involving ISGS, JNIM, and bandits, for example, was the May 2019 kidnapping of two French tourists and

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beheading of their Beninese tour guide in northern Benin before a joint U.S.French special forces operation on Mali’s side of the border freed both hostages and two separately kidnapped American and South Korean women hostages.321 JNIM was loyal to AQIM’s Droukdel, Aymen al-Zawahiri, and late Mullah Umar’s successor as Taliban leader, Mullah Haibatullah, and received approval for its founding from Droukdel and al-Qaeda Central.322 It further amalgamated Iyad ag Ghaly-led Ansar al-Din and Ansar al-Din’s Katiba Macina (Macina Brigade) led by Malian Fulani Amadou Kufa; AQIM’s Jemal Oukacha-led Sahara region fighters; and Mohamed Ould Nouini-led323 al-Murabitun. Nouini was Belmokhtar’s Malian Arab deputy and was late Ahmed al-Tilemsi’s cousin and masterminded two al-Murabitun-claimed special operations in 2016 involving militants named “al-Fulani.”324 The first operation targeted an international hotel and café in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s capital, killing around 30 people, and the second operation targeted a Côte d’Ivoire tourist resort, killing around 20 people.325 In March 2015, before those two special operations, Belmokhtar personally claimed al-Murabitun’s first special operation targeting a Bamako nightclub frequented by Westerners and, in August 2015, al-Murabitun claimed another special operation at a hotel hosting international peacekeepers and Malian soldiers in central Mali.326 However, Kufa’s deputy in Ansar al-Din’s then newly formed Katiba Macina also claimed Kufa gave his “blessings” for that August 2015 attack.327 Al-Murabitun also claimed the November 2015 special operation targeting Bamako’s Radisson Blu hotel, killing around 20 people.328 However, Katiba Macina also claimed the Radisson Blu attack and noted it coordinated with Ansar al-Din, while AQIM’s Droukdel also claimed the Radisson Blu attack while simultaneously announcing al-Murabitun’s allegiance to AQIM.329 Al-Murabitun’s allegiance to AQIM, which apparently resulted from Belmokhtar’s being missing in action, was confirmed by al-Murabitun’s Saudi spokesman, who was MUJWA’s hisba head in Gao and sided with Belmokhtar when he split with Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi in 2015.330 Accordingly, in the words of Iyad ag Ghaly, who became JNIM’s emir, JNIM emulated al-Qaeda-aligned jihadist groups in Syria by formally “uniting and merging” al-Qaeda-loyal fighters in the Sahel who were already closely coordinating with each other.331 JNIM, moreover, inherited the legacy of Belmokhtar’s special operations. It further reasserted alQaeda’s West Africa presence, which was weakened by MUJWA’s split from AQIM and Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi’s and Kheiry’s loyalty pledges to al-Baghdadi. The leader of Katiba Macina, Amadou Kufa, like other Ansar al-Din members, originally embraced the Tablighi Jamaat before “converting” to Salafism and becoming a jihadist.332 Kufa also previously commanded MUJWA’s central Mali-based Ansar al-Sunna (Supporters of Sunna) brigade,

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which included local “sons of the region” and was endorsed in 2012 by Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi.333 Kufa’s superior, Iyad ag Ghaly, was a longtime and originally secular nationalist Malian Tuareg rebel commander from Muammar Qaddafi’s 1980s “Islamic legions” alongside Oumar Hamaha’s brother, who was killed by the Malian army, before Iyad ag Ghaly embraced the Tablighi Jamaat, became Mali’s cultural attaché in Saudi Arabia in the mid-2000s and was expelled by Saudi authorities, and finally adopted Salafi jihadism.334 Kufa, in contrast, studied Islam under “reputable scholars” in Mauritania, became a marabout (itinerant religious teacher) in central Mali, and emerged as a peripheral public figure only in 2010 when he joined preachers led by Malian Salafi scholar and IUM-affiliated Dar al-Hadith alumnus, Mahmoud Dicko, in opposing a secular Malian family law that would have expanded women’s rights.335 This may be why after becoming JNIM’s subleader Kufa believed Malian Salafis, including Mahmoud Dicko, “are more able to understand what we are looking for.”336 He was, therefore, willing to negotiate with Mahmoud Dicko, just as Boko Haram was with Ibrahim Datti Ahmed and Abdullahi Diyar and Belmokhtar was with Shaikh Muhammad al-Hassan Dedew. However, similar to those attempts, talks between Kufa and Mahmoud Dicko collapsed. As JNIM subleader, or specifically its “Macina Region emir,” Kufa urged Fulanis to wage jihad as far as Nigeria and Cameroon in a November 2018 video sitting beside Jemal Oukacha and Iyad ag Ghaly.337 Oukacha also stated in 2016 that AQIM maintained “contacts” with Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi despite al-Sahrawi’s mistaken loyalty to IS.338 Although Oukacha and Abu Iyad al-Tunisi were both killed near Timbuktu, Mali in 2019, and Mohamed Ould Nouini was killed near Iyad ag Ghaly’s hometown, Kidal, Mali in 2018, contacts between JNIM and ISGS existed while they were all operating in Mali and after their deaths, including during the northern Benin kidnapping in May 2019. JNIM leaders’ rhetoric, therefore, demonstrated openness to cooperating or at least coexsting with ISGS, if not also al-Qaeda loyal Ansaru members, former Ansaru members in ISWAP, and al-Qaeda-neutral ISWAP leaders, including Abu Musab. Despite Kufa’s pan-Fulani jihadist vision, any attempt to extend JNIM brigades into Nigeria would face difficulties if based on Kufa’s model to expand Katiba Macina’s reach into Burkina Faso before JNIM’s 2017 founding. Kufa had expanded Katiba Macina’s reach into Burkina Faso through his student, Burkinabe preacher Ibrahim Dicko, who fought with Kufa in Mali in 2012 and later brought a “close circle of loyal supporters” from Burkina Faso to train in Mali.339 In 2015, Ibrahim Dicko also established the first Burkinabe jihadist group, Ansaroul Islam (Supporters of Islam), which sought to revive the Fulani-led Islamic state Djelgoodji in present-day Burkina Faso that came under the Cheikhou Amadou-founded Macina Empire in the eighteenth century.340

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Ibrahim Dicko was eventually killed in French-led counter-terrorism operations in northern Burkina Faso in 2017 and Ansaroul Islam floundered. However, Ansaroul Islam’s remaining fighters and Sultan Ould Bady’s Salah al-Din brigade fighters, including Arabs, Tuaregs, and Fulanis who defected from Kufa, pledged loyalty to IS and joined ISGS before Sultan Ould Bady’s surrender to Algeria in 2018.341 Meanwhile, Ansaroul Islam’s other remaining fighters rejoined Kufa. The absorption of Ansaroul Islam fighters subsequently contributed to the rapid increase in JNIM and especially ISGS, or more accurately ISWAP, attacks in the Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso tri-border region from March 2019 onward. Because Kufa rose in MUJWA and Katiba Macina after Ansaru’s founding and Kufa had no history with the GSPC, he lacked the deep relationships with Nigerian jihadists that he had with Ibrahim Dicko and other Burkinabe fighters. Therefore, Kufa’s ability to expand JNIM into Nigeria through personal contacts was limited. Moreover, any new JNIM-allied jihadist group in Nigeria might need to be even more explicitly committed to Fulani historical jihadist narratives than Ansaru was at the time of its founding. Nevertheless, Ansaru’s promotion of Fulani-oriented narratives in 2019 was increasingly compatible with Kufa’s narratives. Besides that commonality, there were trans-Sahelian bandits and herders who could facilitate Ansaru’s contacts to JNIM, but Ansaru post-2016 messaging still indicated closer ties to al-Qaeda Central media than JNIM’s. The possibility that Abu Musab and other ISWAP moderates might consider rapprochement with JNIM and eventually support a new al-Qaedaloyal brigade in Nigeria or ally with Ansaru to do so was suggested in March 2019 by Agence France-Presse’s Aminu Abubakar. His contacts to Boko Haram existed ever since his January 2006 interviews of Muhammed Yusuf and Aminu Tashen-Ilmi. He learned Abu Musab maintained “close links with more moderate jihadists in Mali,” who may have been in JNIM.342 This would also be consistent with Abu Musab’s record of pro-alQaeda tendencies. ISGS, in contrast to JNIM, began in November 2018 to exhibit particularly extreme brutality when, for example, Abdelhakim alSahrawi oversaw executions of “snitches of the Sahwat” in Mali near the Burkina Faso border. Those executions, which coincided with increasing ISGS attacks on Burkinabe civilians, especially Christians, departed from the action-oriented combat footage with occasional battlefield beheadings that typified both ISGS and ISWAP videos until that point.343 Moreover, if Nigerian army reports were correct that a Malian and an Arab IS trainer were killed alongside several ISWAP “key commanders,” including Abubakar Mainok, in 2019, it would affirm that ISWAP members maintained contacts not only to JNIM but also ISGS.344 Therefore, it follows that some ISWAP hard-liners, like Abubakar Mainok who had opposed Mamman Nur, tended to align with ISGS while ISWAP moder-

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ates, including Abu Musab, tended to align with JNIM. This may have contributed to Abu Musab’s ouster from ISWAP leadership just before ISWAP officially incorporated ISGS on March 22, 2019. ISWAP’s Hard-line Turn In the context of Abu Musab’s remaining ISWAP’s leader but being sidelined after Nur’s purging and exhibiting some pro-al-Qaeda tendencies, on March 4, 2019, ISWAP released a shura audio outside IS media channels, which announced Abu Musab’s demotion to shura member and Ba Idrisa’s promotion to ISWAP leader.345 According to Aminu Abubakar, Abu Musab was forced to abdicate and put in detention “to get him out of the way.”346 Three days later, on March 7, 2019, IS reannounced Adnan Abu Walid alSahrawi’s loyalty pledge to al-Baghdadi in al-Naba newsletter, which was the first time IS mentioned al-Sahrawi since acknowledging his pledge in October 2016.347 If the close timing of Abu Musab’s March 4 ouster, the March 7 al-Naba promotion of al-Sahrawi, and al-Baghdadi’s April video mentioning al-Sahrawi was not coincidental, then ISWAP’s ousting of Abu Musab might have facilitated ISWAP’s March 22 incorporation of ISGS under Ba Idrisa’s leadership. This would especially be the case if Abu Musab resisted the merger because of ISGS’s Shekau-like brutalities toward civilians, ISGS’s focusing on combat more than developing a dawla, or alSahrawi’s seemingly higher status in IS than Abu Musab. Ba Idrisa thus became ISWAP’s leader at a crucial time when IS’s “territorial caliphate” in Iraq and Syria was collapsing and IS depended on ISWAP and other external provinces to validate IS’s global legitimacy. One week after ISWAP’s first March 22, 2019, media release demonstrating its incorporation of ISGS, which was possibly related to IS’s “shaping” ISWAP leadership and Abu Musab’s March 4 ouster, IS began its global “Revenge for [Syria]” media campaign.348 In April 2019, ISWAP proceeded to record more attack claims, thirty-one, than any province outside Iraq and Syria.349 ISWAP’s “Revenge for Syria” attack claims involved ISWAP’s first ever IS-style inghimasi (immersion by fighting until death) operations in Diffa, Niger, which included accompanying “martyrdom photographs,” and an assassination of a mukhtar (village chief) in Borno.350 During this media campaign, ISWAP also released videos through IS-affiliated Amaq news agency of its fighters’ executions of captured Nigerian soldiers and CJTF members from the December 2018 Baga raid and the beheading of a captured soldier in Monguno, who were forced to wear Guantanamo-style jumpsuits for the first time in ISWAP media productions.351 Notable among ISWAP’s thirty-one attack claims was its first ever claim of killing antijihadist militia members in Mali, which was conducted by ISGS fighters, but now in ISWAP’s name.352

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April 2019 also coincided with IS’s announcement of its new Central Africa Province in eastern Congo and northern Mozambique, which indicated IS was administratively reorganizing its sub-Saharan African presence.353 Meanwhile, ISWAP was undergoing new tactical shifts under Ba Idrisa’s leadership, including increasingly targeting Christians and aid workers. The April 25, 2019, al-Naba newsletter, for example, mentioned ISWAP’s burning Chibok churches in response to “massacres [of Muslims] in Plateau [State]” and Chibok’s Christians’ not paying jizya (tax imposed on non-Muslims under Muslim rule).354 This was reminiscent of IS’s imposition of jizya on Syrian Christians and Ansaru’s “defending Muslims” in central Nigeria, especially Jos and elsewhere in Plateau. ISWAP followed with another September 2019 al-Naba article and accompanying video released through Amaq featuring ISWAP fighters executing two “Christian Nigerian army” soldiers wearing Guantanamo-style jumpsuits and again claiming revenge for Muslims killed in Plateau, despite the lack of ISWAP, Boko Haram, or Ansaru operations in Plateau since 2015.355 This echoing of Ansaru narratives suggested former Ansaru members—and especially antiChristian hard-liners—remained embedded within ISWAP. Moreover, the executioners’ mention of “avenging what Plateau’s [Christians] did to Muslims like Abu Yusuf al-Barnawi [Muhammed Yusuf] stated” indicated Yusuf was still venerated by ISWAP, despite Abu Musab’s ouster and late Yusuf’s only urging followers to target Christian proselytizers.356 Another May 2019 al-Naba mention of ISWAP’s attack on Médecins Sans Frontières’ clinic in Mainé-Soroa, southeastern Niger because it “subordinated to France” and “spied” on ISWAP indicated aid workers, like Christians, would increasingly become ISWAP’s targets under Ba Idrisa’s leadership.357 This was also indicated by ISWAP’s asserting that, “for us, there is no difference between Red Cross and UNICEF” after ISWAP killed the second female Muslim ICRC aid worker in October 2018.358 After the Médecins Sans Frontières clinic’s closure due to security concerns, in July 2019, ISWAP killed two and kidnapped six Nigerian Action Against Hunger aid workers in Damasak near Niger’s border. The lone Christian woman, Grace Taku, was then featured speaking beside five abducted men in ISWAP’s proof-of-life video shared with Ahmed Salkida in which she requested CAN to “please assist” her.359 Like in the Dapchi and Rann kidnappings involving Leah Sharibu and Alice Ngaddah, ISWAP eventually announced Grace Taku would be condemned to a “life of slavery.”360 ISWAP’s announcement of her enslavement occurred after one of the men abducted with her was executed in September 2019 and the remaining four men were executed in December 2019 because “the government is not sincere and does not respect timelines.”361 In contrast, in March 2018, ISWAP exchanged three male University of Maiduguri professors who were kidnapped north of Maiduguri and ten other

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women hostages after the professors pleaded in a video for the government to keep negotiating with “soldiers of [the caliphate] under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Barnawi.”362 Once Nur was purged and Abu Musab was sidelined in March 2018, however, it likely became more difficult to negotiate with ISWAP’s hard-liners, including when the two female Muslim ICRC aid workers were executed in September and October 2018 and Sharibu, Ngaddah, and Taku became “enslaved.” Meanwhile, Nigeria’s army claimed aid organizations, including UNICEF in 2018 and Action Against Hunger in 2019, supported ISWAP because they provided food and medicine in some areas under ISWAP control and aid workers’ stolen identity cards were sometimes recovered from slain ISWAP fighters.363 The army’s allegations, however, further embattled humanitarian responders in Borno. Moreover, the army’s withdrawal to “supercamps” facilitated ISWAP’s increasing abductions on Borno roadways. Among the abducted were thirteen travelers, including university professors and one Muslim woman, who were captured in a military convoy ambush on the Damatru-Maiduguri highway. The thirteen hostages were displayed in a December 2019 ISWAP proof-of-life video released to Ahmed Salkida in which a male hostage requested President Buhari and CAN do more than they did for the Action Against Hunger aid workers and Sharibu.364 Three “Nigerian police supporters” abducted in another December 2019 Benisheikh military convoy ambush were also executed by ISWAP in a video released through Amaq, and on December 22, 2019, ISWAP killed several soldiers, CTJF members, and Christian men on a Monguno roadway and abducted five other aid workers.365 Although the five aid workers were released through Salkida’s mediation before ISWAP’s deadline to enslave the two Christian women, Boko Haram then outbid ISWAP by abducting and beheading a CAN Adamawa chairman in January 2020 after CAN did not pay a €2 million ransom, despite Salkida’s mediation efforts.366 Three days after the Monguno abductions, on Christmas Day 2019, ISWAP claimed it killed eight Chibok Christians and released a photograph of two other Chibok Christian men who were abducted.367 The two men were executed by ISWAP weeks later wearing Guantanamo-style jumpsuits and featured in an ISWAP video filmed by uniformed members using their smartphones and released through Amaq.368 Also on Christmas Day 2019, ISWAP released another video through Amaq of eleven of the thirteen hostages from the previous proof-of-life video, but not including the one Muslim woman and another Muslim man. The video featured the eleven hostages wearing Guantanamo-style jumpsuits before they were executed in a way that visually resembled IS’s killings of Ethiopian Christians in Libya in 2015. 369 Although Abu Malek al-Tamimi justified that mass beheading in the name of the Christians’ rejecting dhimmitude, ISWAP’s commander only stated the eleven executions were revenge for

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the killings of our “eminent shaikhs,” Abubakar al-Baghdadi and his spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, in Syria two months earlier.370 ISWAP’s execution of the eleven hostages, including one Muslim and ten Christians, reflected ISWAP’s shift toward Shekau-like extremes and that inevitably a more moderate opposition within ISWAP would have to emerge or defect if Muhammed Yusuf’s legacy remained in the group. While Yusuf lambasted how “dogs assaulted naked prisoners” in US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and “what [the US] did to Muslims in Guantanamo,” Christians unassociated with CAN or building churches were not targets Yusuf called for killing in jihad.371 However, in 2019, the martyr Abubakar al-Baghdadi was apparently more influential in ISWAP than the martyr Muhammed Yusuf from 2009. This immediate release of the eleven hostages’ execution video through Amaq also indicated that ISWAP was in contact with IS and that IS ordered what Ahmed Salkida described as the “swift, abrupt, and shocking” end to negotiations, so those executions could become part of IS’s week-long media campaign launched on December 22 called “Raid of Revenge for Abubakar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hassan al-Muhajir.”372 ISWAP was also solidifying itself as IS’s most important external province not only by this video’s being IS’s most dramatic in that media campaign, but also by IS’s featuring ISWAP on the al-Naba newsletter cover in seven of its last nine weekly editions in 2019.373 Moreover, ISWAP claimed significantly more attacks during that media campaign than any province outside Iraq and Syria, especially because IS’s once strong Khorasan Province was routed by the Taliban in Afghanistan weeks earlier.374 In contrast to the eleven hostages’ execution video, ISWAP’s videos of Leah Sharibu, Alice Ngaddah, the two executed female Muslim ICRC aid workers, Grace Taku and her executed Action Against Hunger colleagues, and the three University of Maiduguri professors were all released to Ahmed Salkida or through other local channels, including Zanna Mustapha. This indicated IS primarily disseminated through Amaq ISWAP’s execution videos of Christian men, Nigerian soldiers, and male travelers who utilized the protection of military convoys. Although in Iraq and Syria IS only imposed jizya on Christians and enslaved Yazidi women because they were not “people of the book” (Ahl al-Kitab), IS contradictorily permitted Christian women’s enslavement, including Sharibu, Ngaddah, and Taku, and ISWAP’s executions of female aid workers in Nigeria, but IS may not have wanted to publicize that to its global followership. The execution video of the eleven hostages, therefore, was consistent with IS’s releasing videos of ISWAP’s executions of Nigerian soldiers, male travelers with military convoys, including Muslims, and Christian men. The propaganda value for IS of executing those eleven hostages also overrode whatever negotiation plans ISWAP had when it originally abducted them.

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Notwithstanding ISWAP’s church attacks, killing Christian men and enslaving Christian women, and kidnapping and killing aid workers, ISWAP still strategically avoided dramatic church bombings or abducting Westerners like Ansaru and AQIM-trained members did previously. This was because ISWAP sought to minimize French or US determination to escalate military pressure on ISWAP that could crush its dawla, as occurred with the IS “territorial caliphate” in Iraq and Syria.375 ISWAP instead pursued a long-term plan to attrite the Nigerian army and distance civilians from exposure to Nigerian institutions until future generations, at least in Borno, would only recognize ISWAP as their “government.” The New Generation of Jihadists ISWAP’s May 2019 photostream of fighters with dimmed sporting sunglasses watching Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s video from the previous month reflected how ISWAP loyalty to al-Baghdadi—and eventually his successor Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi—persisted despite IS’s loss of the “territorial caliphate” in Iraq and Syria.376 However, ISWAP’s newest generation of fighters coming of age in the “IS era” was shedding Muhammed Yusuf’s legacy, including his preaching against imitating the West such as by dress, if not also demoting his son and killing Christian civilians. This new generation was less influenced by Yusuf and had greater desire to be on the “global map,” “look cool,” and kill like IS jihadists.377 Nothing was more emblematic of this new generation than ISWAP’s January 2020 video released through Amaq of an approximately ten-year old child soldier executing a Plateau Christian University of Maiduguri student wearing a Guantanamo-style jumpsuit, who was abducted on the DamatruMaiduguri highway. The boy declared the execution was revenge for what “Plateau Christians . . . have done to our grandparents and children.”378 Although the Abu Musab-led media team sent Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad photographs of children’s training with wooden guns in December 5, 2014, correspondence and posted photographs’ of “cubs’” training with real guns on the al-Urwa al-Wutqha Twitter account in January 2015, this was ISWAP’s first time revealing its child soldiers, whereas Boko Haram’s were featured in several post-2016 videos.379 In several years, this boy was bound to become an ISWAP commander. There were other indications ISWAP hard-liners were becoming empowered and more Shekau-like especially after Ba Idrisa’s March 2019 assumption of ISWAP leadership. For example, ISWAP’s June 2019 video was the first of fourteen videos from IS provinces reaffirming loyalty to alBaghdadi and featured an ISWAP commander, Abu Salma al-Mangawi, speaking beside a lineup of fighters and pick-up trucks with mounted weapons resembling the cinematographic settings in the 2016 pro-Shekau

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“Investigate” video, 2015 video of Shekau’s deputy Man Chari pledging loyalty to al-Baghdadi, and multiple post-2013 Shekau videos.380 The June 2019 video also panned to forty “brothers in Mali and Burkina Faso,” who also pledged loyalty to al-Baghdadi in ISWAP’s name and were led by Sultan Ould Bady’s cousin, who was formerly in Timbuktu’s politically neutral Arab Movement of Azawad militia and later died during a rare IS “Algeria Province” attack in southern Algeria in November 2019.381 This video suggested ISWAP’s commander, whose alias al-Mangawi refers to a Kanuri tribe in southeastern Niger and northern Yobe, including Nguru and Kanama, might have been Shekau-like or was emulating Shekau’s video team’s choreography.382 The promotion of an ISWAP commander who likely had roots in Niger also indicated the potential of ISWAP’s linking to ISGS through commanders from Niger, despite the vast distance between ISWAP and ISGS operational areas in Niger. That June 2019 video also followed a May 2019 ISWAP video showing intense brutality reminiscent of Ali Midan al-Gamborawi’s videos in 2014, ISGS’s execution video featuring Abdelhakim al-Sahrawi in November 2018, and late IS Kosovar Albanian Lavdrim Muhaxheri and his cofighters’ July 2014 video. Muhaxheri’s shooting a captured Sunni Syrian Arab tribesman with an RPG from close range coincided with Abu Iyad alTunisi’s retraction letter to al-Zawahiri in July 2014.383 In ISWAP’s May 2019 video, one fighter also shot an RPG directly into the body of a Nigerian soldier captured from Metele.384 Two months before that ISWAP video’s release, in March 2019, Shekaulike surges in abductions of Muslim women also began occurring in ISWAP operational areas, especially in southeastern Niger where al-Mangawi’s tribe hailed, indicating the “tumor” of Shekau’s ideology was not eradicated.385 Before Ba Idrisa’s March 2019 assumption of ISWAP leadership, Lake Chad–based Nigerian officials also reported “Shekau-type” commanders, including Nur’s nemesis, Mustapha Kirmimma, rising in ISWAP and fighters specifically in Niger and Chad splitting from ISWAP.386 There were also not only post–March 2019 increases in female abductions but also an August 2019 female suicide bombing near Lake Chad in Chad and others in Chad subsequently.387 This implied hard-liners reintroduced Shekau-like tactics in ISWAP operational areas. Some ISWAP hard-liners may have viewed Ba Idrisa, who sided with Abu Musab during the August 2016 leadership split, as too moderate and defected to, or coordinated with, Boko Haram after Ba Idrisa became leader. These hard-liners who tended toward Shekau or adopted Shekau-like tactics after March 2019, especially abductions of Muslim women, might have included commanders originally close to Shekau before August 2016 but who stayed with ISWAP after the leadership split, including Abubakar Mainok, who ascended in ISWAP’s hierarchy after Nur’s purging until

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Mainok’s own reported death; commanders operating in the Nigeria-Niger borderlands who abducted the Dapchi girls believing it was permissible, but who were then ordered to return the girls; and commanders like alMangawi.388 His origin and June 2019 video speech using classical Arabic (fusha) and mentioning “breaking illusory borders” between Niger and Chad could suggest why female abductions occurred most frequently in southeastern Niger after March 2019 and why Nigerian military officials noticed “Shekau-type” commanders rising specifically in Niger and Chad.389 ISWAP furthermore inexplicably never claimed three major barracks raids in ISWAP operational areas near Lake Chad’s shorelines in 2019, including in March in Dangdala, Chad, in June in Darak, Cameroon, and in October in Blabrine, Niger, which killed twenty-three, seventeen, and twelve soldiers, respectively.390 This was despite ISWAP’s claiming attacks on a daily basis, publishing several long videos per year through IS’s centralized media apparatus, and releasing short execution clips around once every month through Amaq. Those three barracks raids were, therefore, conducted by commanders operating outside Ba Idrisa’s command and control. This could have occurred if ISWAP hard-liners or defectors conducting the unclaimed post– March 2019 female abductions also conducted those three barracks raids without Ba Idrisa’s approval and with Boko Haram. This would explain why an Arabic-speaking preacher with two armed fighters affirmed in a September 24, 2019, Boko Haram video “from Lake Chad” and “greeting our imam,” Shekau, “and brothers in Sambisa” that they conducted attacks in Chad, Cameroon, and Niger, including specifically the Darak barracks raid whose spoils were shown in the video, and attacks in Blabrine.391 The preacher also stated they were the “saved sect” and “have pride” even if they are fewer than the “filthy murjites [ISWAP]” who tried to kill them “ten times.”392 Further, in November 2019 attack claims and an accompanying video with the same preacher, Boko Haram took credit for the Blabrine raid and a Maiduguri attack and released ghanima (spoils) photographs from them.393 The September 24 video, like other Boko Haram videos in 2019, was released on Telegram and surfaced one day after Boko Haram released a Shekau video greeting fighters specifically in Lake Chad and holding a miswak in his mouth, shooting his gun wildly, and standing with fighters lined up beside him.394 These two September 23 and 24, 2019, videos, as well as Boko Haram’s several attack claims on or near Lake Chad from July 2019 onward, including in towns where ISWAP was also claiming attacks, affirmed Boko Haram’s presence on Lake Chad for the first time since the August 2016 leadership split.395 Shekau’s September 23 video, which was his first time focusing on Lake Chad since August 2016, likely reflected his recognizing Boko Haram’s new alliance with Lake Chad–based fighters, similar to his recognizing the new reconciliation with Khalid al-Barnawi and realignment with al-Qaeda in his November 29, 2012, video.

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It is unlikely Sambisa-based Boko Haram could have conducted the three major barracks raids around Lake Chad, especially the amphibious operation involving a reported 300 fighters in Darak, which is an island accessible only by boat, unless ISWAP hard-liners or defectors or other Lake Chad–based jihadists supported Boko Haram.396 One indication the preacher and fighters in the September 24 and November 2019 videos were previously with ISWAP around Lake Chad and defected to Boko Haram was the preacher’s claim that they killed one of the few war heroes Nigeria’s army ever publicized: Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Abu Ali.397 His death occurred in a battle in ISWAP’s operational areas in Malumfatori near Lake Chad’s shoreline and Niger’s border in November 2016. ISWAP’s factionalization was also corroborated by post–March 2019 reports about deadly infighting in Niger between three factions over tax money and, according to Datty Assalafiy, ISWAP’s Kebbi-born “tax chief” fleeing to Mali with funds.398 Furthermore, the continued lack of any public recognition by IS of Ba Idrisa’s leadership one year after ISWAP designated him as leader indicated there might be tensions externally with IS regarding ISWAP’s leadership.399 Ba Idrisa, for example, reportedly sought pledges of loyalty from outside Nigeria after becoming ISWAP leader.400 It is possible he struggled to win support from former ISGS, and now ISWAP, commanders, which made IS hesitant to publicly approve his leadership. One interpretation of ISWAP’s post–March 2019 factionalization was that fighters unswervingly committed to IS, like Kirmimma, orchestrated the March 2019 ouster of Abu Musab and named Ba Idrisa as leader because of his credibility from personal ties to Muhammed Yusuf, continued loyalty to IS, and willingness to merge with ISGS. This might explain why ISWAP became even more acculturated to IS from March 2019 onward, including conducting executions with victims’ wearing Guantanamo-style jumpsuits only after March 2019. Nevertheless, the March 2019 leadership change implied that, as in previous years, ISWAP featured competing factions. Although Ba Idrisa was ISWAP’s leader, Abu Musab and his brother, Abba al-Barnawi, returned to their former strategic communication roles, with the latter managing ISWAP’s WhatsApp messaging accounts with IS liaisons in Sudan based on their phone number country codes. This might also explain why Sudan announced it arrested six “Boko Haram” members from Nigeria and Chad in 2019.401 The main ISWAP faction after March 2019, therefore, seemingly included IS-loyal moderates like Ba Idrisa officially leading ISWAP, but backed by more powerful ISWAP hard-liners. These hard-liners included younger generations who respected, but never personally followed, Muhammed Yusuf, and maintained contacts with ISGS in the Sahel. Another faction included IS-loyal moderates like Abu Musab who were neutral, or slightly favorable, toward alQaeda and maintained contacts to JNIM and possibly Ansaru and ISGS in

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northwestern Nigeria. However, the latter faction was considered suspect by IS and ISWAP hard-liners. ISWAP’s November 2019 photostream of fighters’ pledging loyalty to al-Baghdadi’s successor Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi and ISWAP’s seventeen attack claims, including inghimasi operations in Yobe and Borno and executing the eleven hostages on Christmas Day, to promote IS’s media campaign avenging al-Baghdadi’s and Abu Hassan al-Muhajir’s deaths indicated ISWAP’s leadership officially remained loyal to IS after al-Baghdadi’s death.402 However, ISWAP’s December 2019 executions of fighters for contacting AQIM indicated ISWAP leaders’ disinterest in taslim with alQaeda, despite JNIM’s seeking coexistence with ISWAP, which Abu Numan indicated in January 2020 treatises that also discouraged JNIM defections to ISWAP.403 ISWAP hard-liners, including its empowered former ISGS fighters, were bound to fight JNIM and Ansaru, just as IS fought Jabhat al-Nusra. Fighters executed by ISWAP for contacting AQIM, therefore, may have been Abu Musab’s al-Qaeda-neutral loyalists, former Ansaru members in ISWAP, or former Shekau loyalist Adam Bitri’s fighters. Bitri failed to establish ISWAP ties to Ansaru in northwestern Nigeria in 2019 due to Ansaru’s excessively long-term approach and then led fighters near Malumfatori who clashed with Ba Idrisa. Besides ISWAP’s internal factions, there were also likely ISWAP hardliners or hard-line defectors cooperating with Boko Haram, operating around Lake Chad in Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, and defying Ba Idrisa by conducting female abductions, especially in southeastern Niger, that Ba Idrisa neither approved nor claimed as ISWAP attacks. These fighters would have also conducted the Dangdala, Darak, and Blabrine barracks raids that ISWAP never claimed. Boko Haram’s inclusion of a Kanuri nasheed for the first time in its video claiming the Blabrine raid and the preacher’s mention in that video of brothers’ being spread across Lake Chad affirmed that Boko Haram had cells around Lake Chad and was attempting to appeal to Kanuris, despite Lake Chad having been ISWAP’s operational area almost exclusively since the August 2016 leadership split.404 Some hard-liners, therefore, may have left ISWAP’s fold entirely, especially if they viewed Ba Idrisa as too moderate or lost confidence in IS when its “territorial caliphate” collapsed, if not also when al-Baghdadi was killed, and allied with Boko Haram. If they still viewed IS’s caliphate as legitimate, but believed Ba Idrisa was too moderate, then Shekau’s continued loyalty to IS could assuage them. There was also a hard-line Lake Chad–based Kanuri jihadist, Bakura, who was in Boko Haram but rejected ISWAP after Abubakar Mainok welcomed Abu Musab and Mamman Nur to the region. He then led fighters around N’Guigmi, Niger, including Budumas like those beheading “Kanembuwa,” mentioned in Chapter 9.405 His fighters likely conducted post–March 2019 female abductions in southeastern Niger and realigned

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with Shekau, who approved that tactic. Their reported baya to Shekau was also evidenced by the preacher in the video “greeting” Shekau “from Lake Chad” stating that Bakura “commanded us” (umirt ‘alayna), and they killed dozens of Darak fishermen competing with them for profits in December 2019 and likely abducted the Chadian medics seen in a February 2020 Boko Haram video.406 Rather than Shekau’s deploying fighters from Sambisa to Lake Chad, Boko Haram may have amalgamated ISWAP hard-line defectors like Bakura’s fighters, who became Boko Haram’s Lake Chad–based fighters by pledging baya to Shekau. Whereas ISWAP’s restrictions on certain attacks, such as abducting Muslim women civilians and killing Muslim civilian fisherman, would have deterred Bakura’s fighters, Shekau’s allowance of virtually any type of attack could have attracted them. Meanwhile, shared hardline Salafi-jihadi ideology would have enabled Boko Haram’s collaboration with other ISWAP hard-liners or defectors. The apparent alliance between Shekau-led Boko Haram, Bakura’s fighters, and hard-line ISWAP defectors challenged ISWAP’s predominance around Lake Chad. The anti-ISWAP cooperation between Shekau, Bakura, and also Adam Bitri further explains a Bosso, Niger-based journalist’s March 2019 report on “Shekau’s faction” attacking late “Mamman Nur’s faction”; Nigeria’s military learning of ISWAP’s killing Bakura’s fighters in September 2019, as the preacher mentioned in Boko Haram’s video “greeting” Shekau “from Lake Chad” that month; and ISWAP’s first time explicitly condemning Shekau for “leaving the Muslims” for “the faction” (al-furqa) in February 2020.407 Ten years after Muhammed Yusuf’s death, his legacy persisted but was becoming faint. Yusuf was, after all, never a military commander like the generation of jihadists in Nigeria and the Lake Chad subregion after his death. Moreover, it was Abu Musab keeping his father’s legacy alive more than anyone by releasing transcripts of Yusuf’s final sermons on al-Urwa alWutqha in 2015, recounting Yusuf’s biography in his book in 2018, and becoming leader himself until his ouster in 2019.408 However, besides those Abu Musab–inspired recollections, ISWAP and Boko Haram rarely mentioned Yusuf, including on the ten-year anniversary of his death and, if anything, Boko Haram replayed his sermons in videos more than ISWAP.409 Like Yusuf’s legacy, the 1994 arrival of Algerian jihadists to Nigeria, the post-9/11 separation from and enmity toward Izala, and the 2003 Kanama camp clashes were also history infrequently recalled by ISWAP’s and Boko Haram’s new generation of fighters who were more tuned into Abubakar al-Baghdadi and IS’s caliphate than Yusuf, Muhammed Ali, or even Bin Laden.410 Nevertheless, the goal upon which Yusuf and Ali agreed—establishing a dawla—was being achieved by 2020, and their progeny, ISWAP, was among the world’s most formidable jihadist groups with capabilities beyond what Yusuf, Ali, or virtually anyone in Nigeria could have ever imagined.

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1. Africa Media, “Scattered Words,” 5. 2. Mustapha interview. 3. Zenn, “Boko Haram—Candid.” 4. Zenn, “Twitter—Al-Urwha al-Wutqha.” 5. BH, “Refusers of Injustices.” 6. Africa Media, “Scattered Words,” 2. 7. Khitab Al-Masri, Twitter, January 18, 2015. 8. Mark, “Boko Haram’s ‘Deadliest.’” 9. Shekau, “Message to World,” 23:40. 10. Ibid., 22:00. 11. ISWAP, “Interview,” 3:17, 3:57. 12. Ibid.,” 1:27. 13. Ibid.,” 2:57. 14. Ansaru, “Introduction.” 15. Zenn, “Twitter—Al-Urwha al-Wutqha”; see also Africa Media, “Communiques,” 12–13. 16. BH, “Message from a Mujahid,” 1:50. 17. Ansaru, “God Is Our Master”; Tsenzughul, “Two Killed.” 18. Premium Times, “Nigerian Military Kills.” 19. FATF, “Terrorist Financing,” 11, 17. 20. Ansaru, “God Is Our Master,” 1:50, 4:40. 21. Ibid, 1:10. 22. Africa Media, “Communiques,” 17. 23. Ibid. 24. Ansaru, “Investigating Nigeria’s Army.” 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid.; Abdulmalik, “Soldiers Kill Civilians.” 27. HRW, “At Least 1,000.” 28. Tsenzughul, “Two Killed.” 29. Shekau, “Message to African Leaders”; BH, “Damatru Raid.” 30. BH, “Penalties of Allah’s Book.” 31. Loimeier, Islamic Reform, 147. 32. ICC, “ICC Trial Chamber.” 33. BH, “General Command”; Shekau, “Message to Leaders of Disbelievers.” 34. Zenn, “Al-Urwha al-Wutqha—Leaflet.” 35. ISWAP, “Gombe Attack.” 36. Shekau, “Message to Leaders of Disbelievers.” 37. BH, “Refusers of Injustices.” 38. Al-Battar Media Foundation, “Biographies,” 00:20. 39. Ibid.; ISI, “Knights,” 00:20–00:40. 40. Al-Battar Media Foundation, “Jihad.” 41. Africa Media, “Scattered Words,” 3; BH, “Sermons,” 4–5. 42. Ansaru, “Investigating Nigeria’s Army,” 0:53. 43. AQIM, “Trip to Interview,” 0:27; AQIM, “From the Depths,” 0:05, 5:20. 44. BH, “Harvest of Spies.” 45. Ibid., 5:10. 46. BH, “Secret”; ISWAP, “Monguno Beheading.” 47. Shekau, “Bay’a to Caliph.” 48. Aymenn Al-Tamimi, “Spread the Good.” 49. Al-Adnani, “They Slay,” 5:16. 50. Zenn, “Twitter—Al-Urwha al-Wutqha”; al-Qahtani, Twitter, March 7, 2015. 51. Al-Hidaya, “I Want His Life”; al-Bulaydi, “Issues”; Nazari, “Statement.” 52. Al-Zawahiri, “Islamic Spring Episode 5.” 53. Zenn, “Islamic State—Celebration.” 54. Africa Media, “Scattered Words,” 5; Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 456; al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 41. 55. IS, Dabiq no. 5, 24; IS, Dabiq no. 7, 34.

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56. IS, Dabiq no. 8, 5, 14–16. 57. Al-Gharib, Twitter, October 13, 2014. 58. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 464. 59. Yusuff, “‘Allah Will Forgive Me.’” 60. ISWAP, “Tribulations and Blessings,” 14:20–15:40; al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 108. 61. Al-Ansari, “Message from Nigeria,” 21. 62. Salkida, Twitter, March 11, 2016; Nasrullah, Twitter, August 16, 2019. 63. Nwabufo, “DSS ‘Captures’ al-Barnawi’s ‘Deputy.’” 64. Alias: Anas al-Nashwan. 65. A.M. Al-Tamimi, “Nigerian Questions”; al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 19. 66. Ayad, Twitter, November 30, 2019. 67. IS, “Until There Came.” 68. A.M. Al-Tamimi, “Nigerian Questions,” 14–15. 69. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 91–92. 70. Bunzel, “Ideological Infighting.” 71. Zenn, “Humam.” 72. Twitter activist Salilat al-Uzama, for example, was accused of being among the spies in Sariyat Hafidat Aisha’s women’s media unit. Al-Uzama, Twitter, January 28, 2015; Sariyat Hafidat Aisha, Twitter, March 9, 2016. 73. Hegghammer, “Interpersonal Trust,” 13–14. 74. Al-Hamad, “Clarifying the Stance.” 75. Mujaheed Dan Borno, Twitter, March 2015. 76. Zenn, “Twitter—Al-Urwha al-Wutqha”; ISWAP, “Media Martyrs”; ISWAP, “Knights of Africa,” 5:46; ISWAP, “Arrivals”; ISWAP, “Battle Scenes”; ISWAP, “Raids”; ISWAP, “Foiling Attack”; ISWAP, “Aspect of Battles.” 77. Barlow, “Men of the 72.” 78. Foxnews.com, “Boko Haram Stages Assault.” 79. BBC, “Chad Bans.” 80. Tchadinfos, “Bana Fanaye.” 81. Zenn, “ISWAP—N’Djamena”; Al Jazeera, “Female Bombers.” 82. Al-Muhajireen, “Abu Fatima.” 83. Abdulganiy, “How Justice”; Sahara Reporters, “Wife, Children”; Zenn, “Islamic State—Abu Waheeb.” 84. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 107. 85. Ibid. 86. BBC, “Control and Crucifixions.” 87. The first black Muslim in seventh century Hijaz region and Islam’s first mu’ezzin (prayer caller). 88. Awas al-Barqawi, Twitter, June 14, 2015; A. U. al-Barqawi, Twitter, June 16, 2015. 89. Al-Salahi, “New Foreign Elements”; Zenn, “IS Libya Provinces.” 90. Zenn, “IS Libya Provinces.” 91. Al Jazeera, “Libyan Forces.” 92. Townsend, “We’ve Cleared ISIS”; Premium Times, “Alleged Recruiter.” 93. US Department of Defense, “Press Briefing.” 94. Benibrahim, “ISIS Affiliates”; The Guardian, “Sister of Parramatta Shooter.” 95. Meleagrou-Hitchens and Hughes, “Threat”; Sandhu, “Businessman-Turned-ISIS.” 96. United States v. Jallo, “Sentencing.” 97. Premium Times, “Alleged Recruiter.” 98. United States v. Jallo, “Affidavit”; “UCC1” referred to Abu Isa al-Amriki. 99. United States v. Jallo, “Sentencing.” 100. United States v. Jallo, “Affidavit”; United States v. Jallo, “Position.” 101. Premium Times, “Alleged Recruiter.” 102. Ibid. 103. Sahara Reporters, “Nigeria Arrests.” 104. Agande, “DSS Arrests Mastermind”; Premium Times, “‘Muslim Brotherhood’ Plotting.” 105. Pulse, “DSS Nabs”; Federal High Court, “Between.” 106. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 39. 107. Buka, “Facebook Account.”

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108. Obiejiesi, “Insecurity Worsening”; Ansaru, “Investigating Nigeria’s Army”; Nwabufo, “DSS ‘Captures’ al-Barnawi’s ‘Deputy.’” 109. Salkida and Anka, “Why Peace Efforts.” 110. Ibid. 111. Global Islamic Media Front, “Ansaru Photos.” 112. Ansaru, “Photo.” 113. Weiss, “Ansar.” 114. Rocket.Chat, “Ansaru Account.” 115. Ansaru, “Emir’s Convoy.” 116. Ibid; Pérouse de Montclos, “Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria,” 894; Markaz Ahlus Sunnah Waljama’ah, “Destruction,” 1:06. 117. Ansaru, “Kar a Barmu”; Kassim, Twitter, May 20, 2019. 118. IS, al-Naba no. 24, 8. 119. Schmitt, “Pentagon Has Plan.” 120. Cremonesi, “Arrestato.” 121. Nasrullah, “Survival and Expansion,” 7; Fadhaat (Misrata), “Youth Explains.” 122. IS, al-Naba no. 190, 9–10. 123. Mustapha discussion; Pérouse de Montclos, “Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria,” 894. 124. Nasrullah, “Who Is Boko Haram’s.” 125. Nasrullah, “Interesting Twist”; Nasrullah, “Interesting Twist II”; Vanguard, “Shekau ‘Ousted.’” 126. Shekau, “Denying Death.” 127. Shekau, “Reaffirming Loyalty.” 128. ISWAP, “Message from Mujahideen.” 129. The elder, for example, did not pronounce the Hausa glottal “Ƙ” sound in “Ƙarƙashi” (beneath) and pronounced “Haduwa” instead of “Haɗuwa” (meet) and “Amfano” instead of “Amfani” (benefit). I. Ahmed discussion. 130. ISWAP, “Message from Mujahideen.” 131. Ibid., 5:45–6:05; SaharaTV, “Boko Haram Militants”; BH, “Message from a Mujahid.” 132. Anonymous former Ansaru associate interview. 133. Zenn, “ISWAP—Video Messages to Mujahideen of Somalia.” 134. Ibid. 135. ISWAP, “Eid-2015.” 136. AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 15. 137. ISWAP, “Message from Caliphate.” 138. ISWAP, “Establishing Limits.” 139. Milton, “Pulling Back the Curtain.” 140. Mahmood and Ndubuisi, “Factional Dynamics,” 7. 141. Shekau, “Surrender.” 142. Ibid. 143. Ghuraba refers to the hadith stating, “Islam began as something strange and will revert to being strange as it began.” 144. Shekau, “Declaring Islamic State,” 13:04. 145. Shekau, “Surrender,” 5:35–5:45. 146. Salkida and Anka, “Why Peace Efforts.” 147. Referring to Quranic verse, al-Nisa 4:94. 148. ISWAP, “Investigate.” 149. See Shekau, “Assassinating Shaykh Albani”; Shekau, “Message to Umma”; Shekau, “Lagos and Wuse Bombings”; Shekau, “Declaring State Within”; Shekau, “Beheading”; Shekau, “Declaring Islamic State”; Shekau, “Message to Paul Biya”; Shekau, “Message to World”; ISWAP, “Message from Caliphate”; BH, “Fine”; Shekau, “Greetings to my Brothers”; Shekau, “Searching for Truth”; Shekau, “New Message”; BH, “Support from God.” 150. ISWAP, “Investigate.” 151. Mahmood and Ndubuisi, “Factional Dynamics,” 19. 152. Sahara Reporters, “Ex-Boko Haram Intelligence Chief.” 153. FATF, “Terrorist Financing,” 31. 154. Dakaractu.com, “Moustapha.” 155. PressAfrik, “Prêcheur.” 156. ICG, “Facing the Challenge,” 20.

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157. Mahmood and Ndubuisi, “Factional Dynamics,” 19. 158. ISWAP, “Niger Raid,” 1:28; ISWAP, “Diffa Raid.” 159. Ibid.; Mahmood and Ndubuisi, “Factional Dynamics,” 11. 160. ISWAP, “Kanama Attack.” 161. IS, al-Naba no. 41, 8–9. 162. Ibid. 163. Ibid. 164. Nur and Abu Fatima, “Expose.” 165. Alias: Abu Abdullah Idrisa bin Umar al-Barnawi. 166. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 448, 464. 167. Ibid., 450. 168. Ibid., 463. 169. Anonymous journalist interviewing Aminu Tashen-Ilmi interview; Nasrullah, “Survival and Expansion,” 21. 170. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 105; Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 453; Iroegbu, “Shekau’s Bodyguard.” 171. Abu Maryam al-Yaqub co-signed the 2011 letter from future Ansaru founders to Abdullah al-Shinqiti. It is unclear if Nur referred to another Abu Maryam or him. 172. Muazu, “Wasu Daga Cikin Kalaman Sheikh”; Toromade, “Army Says Boko”; US Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Sanctions”; Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 455. For Moustapha Chad’s photograph, see Kassim, “Boko Haram’s Internal,” 5. 173. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 105–106. 174. Pérouse de Montclos, “Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria,” 895. 175. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 452–453; Nasrullah, “Survival and Expansion,” 21; Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 41, 82. 176. Mustapha interview. 177. Mustapha interview; Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 453. 178. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 455. 179. Ibid., 456. 180. Ibid., 450, 464–466. 181. Ibid., 456. 182. Shekau, “Demotion Response.” 183. Ibid. 184. Africa Media, “Communiques,” 9. 185. Shekau, “Demotion Response.” 186. Nasrullah, “Survival and Expansion,” 9. 187. Stewart, “Boko Haram Fracturing”; Sahara Reporters, “Ex-Boko Haram Intelligence Chief.” 188. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 455. 189. Shekau and Man Chari, “Message from Soldiers.” 190. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 468. 191. Ibid., 469. 192. Shekau, “Discussing Mamman”; Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 472. 193. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 475–476. 194. Ibid., 478. 195. Africa Media, “Scattered Words,” 5. 196. Shekau, “Happy with Killings”; Shekau, “This Is Our Creed.” 197. Zenn, “Boko Haram—Amended Logos.” 198. Ibid; BH, “General Command”; Africa Media, “Communiques”; Africa Media, “Scattered Words.” 199. Shekau, “This Is Our Creed.” 200. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 456. 201. Shekau, “Message to Leaders of Disbelievers.” 202. Shekau, “Message to Paul Biya”; Shekau, “Message to World”; Shekau, “Message to African Leaders.” 203. Africa Media, “Scattered Words,” 3. 204. Salkida, Twitter, April 17, 2019. 205. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 108; ISWAP, “Tribulations and Blessings,” 14:40; ISWAP, “Muhammed Bakr.”

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206. Mustapha interview. 207. Shekau, “Lagos and Wuse Bombings,” 3:20; Shekau, “Declaring Islamic State.” 208. Zenn, “Chibok—Proof-of-Life.” 209. CNN, “Video Depicts Nigerian Girls.” 210. BH, “Message to Families.” 211. Al Jazeera, “‘Senior Fighters Killed.’” 212. Shekau, “Mocking Chibok Girls.” 213. Salkida, Twitter, December 12, 2017. 214. ISWAP, “Abu Hassan Gombe.” 215. Parkinson and Hinshaw, “Freedom.” 216. BH, “Chibok Girls Inviting.” 217. BH, “Chibok Girls Thanking,” 13:40–21:00, 36:00. 218. A psychological phenomenon where hostages sympathize with their captors. 219. Mustapha interview. 220. Ibid. 221. Parkinson and Hinshaw, “Freedom.” 222. Ehiabhi, “Only Clerics”; Mustapha interview. 223. BH, “Prepare Against Them”; Nigerian military, “January 2018 Briefing,” 1:25. 224. BH, “Combat.” 225. Nasir, “Only 15.” 226. Salkida, Twitter, April 14, 2018. 227. Nasrullah, “Survival and Expansion,” 10. 228. Shekau, “Muhammadu Buhari Threats”; Shekau, “Alive”; Shekau, “Mocking Buhari”; Shekau, “Mocking Nigeria”; Shekau, “Borno Attacks”; Shekau, “Greetings to My Brothers.” 229. Zenn, “Boko Haram—Plagiarizing”; BH, “Cameroonian Fighters,” 6:30; BH, “Chadian Medics.” 230. BH, “Eid-2016”; BH, “Eid-2017.” 231. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 476–477. 232. Soriwei, “Army Killed Five.” 233. BH, “Alive with Their Lord.” 234. Al Jazeera, “Suicide Attack”; Shekau, “Explosions at University.” 235. Shekau, “Abducting Women.” 236. Salkida, “Corps Member”; Haruna, “Corps Member Kidnapped.” Desert Herald, “FG, Gov Zulum, NGO.” 237. Shekau, “U.S. Election Response.” 238. Shekau, “New Message”; VOANews, “Mother of Boko Haram Leader.” 239. Shekau, “So That Those Who Perish.” 240. Shekau, “Searching for Truth.” 241. Ibid. 242. Shekau, “Response to Malignant Bulama”; Buhari, “Shekau Releases New Audio.” 243. Bukarti, Twitter, September 7, 2019. 244. Iguda, “Dilemma of Western Education.” 245. Salkida, Twitter, November 1, 2019; Shekau, “Message to Bad Scholars.” 246. Shekau, “Mawlid,” 8:00–9:00; Shekau, “Anti-Shia,” 0:43, 6:00, 14:40. 247. Shekau, “Christmas Sermon”; Shekau, “Message on Creed,” 49:00. 248. Kassim, Twitter, August 16, 2019; ISWAP, “Part 2: Slay,” 9:50. 249. BH, “Jiddari”; Kindzeka, “Cameroon Records.” 250. BH, “Life in Sambisa”; BH, “Eid-2019,” 5:45; BH, “Hisba.” 251. BH, “Eid-2016”; BH, “Eid-2017”; BH, “Eid-2018.” 252. BH, “Eid-2019”; BH, “Alive with Their Lord”; SembeTV, Twitter, December 19, 2019. 253. Shekau, “Abducting Women,” 13:40; ISWAP, “Tribulations and Blessings,” 1:07–1:17; ISWAP, “Marte Battle”; ISWAP, “Part 2: Slay,” 11:45, 15:45; Audu, “Troops Uncover.” 254. BH, “Al-Wala”; BH, “Secret of Hypocrites”; BH, “God’s Promise.” 255. The alias was Abu Jandal al-Iraqi. Zenn, “Ansaru and Boko Haram—Nasheeds”; Al-Lami, “How Boko Haram is Ripping”; BH, “Support from God”; BH, “Judgment”; Shekau, “New Message.” 256. BH, “Rann Attack.” 257. ISWAP, “Aspect of Battles,” 1:53–2:03; ISWAP, “Aspect of Progress,” 7:50–8:10; ISWAP, “Tribulations and Blessings,” 7:10–7:35, 13:20–13:25.

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258. SembeTV, Twitter, August 8, 2019. 259. Ibid.; SembeTV, Twitter, July 31, 2019; L'Oeil du Sahel, Twitter, February 16, 2020. 260. Zenn, “Islamic State—Assorted Al-Himmah”; Kassim, Twitter, May 16, 2019. 261. IS, al-Naba no. 179, 7. 262. Calibre Obscura, “Dangerous Developments.” 263. Punch, “Boko Haram Attacks”; IS, al-Naba no. 198, 9. 264. Kime, “Babbangida Attack.” 265. News24, “Fishermen of Lake Chad.” 266. BH, “Imposing Limits”; BH, “Executions”; BH, “No Glory Except Jihad,” 2:50–3:00; ISWAP, “Flames of Sharp Swords,” 3:20–3:45. 267. Africa Media, “Communiques,” 4–5. 268. ISWAP, “Tribulations and Blessings,” 14:40 269. Ibid., 5:00; AQIM, “Sharia Advice,” 13. 270. ISWAP, “Aspect of Progress,” 2:04. 271. Olafusi, “We Are Devastated”; Adebulu, “Red Cross ‘Heartbroken.’” 272. Zanna Mustapha allowed the author to view screenshots of the video. 273. Premium Times, “Dapchi Residents”. Details about prisoner releases were classified. 274. Sahara Reporters, “Boko Haram Gives Reason”; Salkida, “Boko Haram Executes Another.” 275. Zalunci, “Kunyi Abun Kunya.” 276. Salkida, “Boko Haram Executes Another.” 277. Nur and Abu Fatima, “Expose.” 278. MacLean, “Schoolgirls Seized.” 279. Nasrullah, “Survival and Expansion,” 7. 280. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 37. 281. Ibid., 41. Salkida, Twitter, October 15, 2019. 282. Ibid., 39–40. 283. News24, “Boko Haram Commander”; ISWAP, “Executing Mamman Nur.” 284. Anonymous former Ansaru associate interview. 285. Anonymous European diplomat discussion. 286. ISWAP, “Kangarwa.” 287. Sahara Reporters, “Boko Haram Leader Mamman.” 288. ISWAP, “Tribulations and Blessings,” 0:15–0:25; Zenn, “ISWAP—SVBIEDs.” 289. News24, “Hundreds of Nigerian Troops.” 290. France24, “Nigerian Soldiers Lash Out.” 291. Haruna, “Boko Haram in Charge.” 292. ISWAP, “Emigration and Combat,” 14:07, 22:20–24:20, 26:30. 293. Nasrullah, Twitter, June 20, 2019; ICG, “Facing the Challenge,” 9–10. 294. Nasrullah, “Survival and Expansion,” 8–11. 295. Kelly, “Islamic State Fighters”; Nasrullah, Twitter, July 14, 2019. 296. Ogbeche, “My Father”; ISWAP, “Disperse Them,” 3:50. 297. ISWAP, “Tungunshe Ambush”; ISWAP, “Monguno Beheading.” 298. BH, “Damatru Raid,” 00:20, 4:34; ISWAP, “Raids,” 00:25–1:50; ISWAP, “Aspect of Battles,” 0:37–0:44; ISWAP, “Rocket-Making Workshop”; ISWAP, “Maiduguri Rockets”; 299. Asadu, “60 Killed.” 300. ISWAP, “Diffa Rockets.” 301. Kheiry, “Azawadan Support”; al-Sahrawi, “Pledge.” 302. AP, “Al-Qaida Papers: A Disciplinary Letter,” 11; JNIM, “Whoever Warns,” 10:35. 303. Lyammouri, “Key Events.” 304. Ibid.; Kheiry, “Azawadan Support.” 305. Ibid; Al-Sahrawi, “Announcing a New Emir.” 306. Al-Hamad, Twitter, May 15, 2015; Africa Media, “Finally!” 307. Belmokhtar’s status remained uncertain as this book went to press. Lyammouri, “Key Events.” 308. Al-Sahrawi, “Pledge.” 309. Postings, Twitter, March 7, 2019. 310. ISWAP, “First Burkina.” 311. Navarro, “A la Une.” 312. UN Security Council, “Twenty-Fourth Report,” 11.

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313. IS, al-Naba no. 205, 4. 314. RFI, “Le Groupe EI Revendique.” 315. RFI, “Le Mujao”; MUJWA, “Implementing Sharia,” 1:10; MUJWA, “Events of Life,” 19:00; RFI, “Le Groupe EI Revendique.” 316. Armstrong, “Behind the Jihadist Attack.” 317. ISWAP, “Arbinda Rockets”; ISWAP, “Chinagodrar Niger Claim.” 318. Al-Baghdadi, “In the Company of the Amir”; Nsaibia, “Heeding the Call.” 319. La Tribune du Sahara, “Qui est Walid.” 320. Meaning “Group of Supporters of Islam and Muslims.” 321. Guibert, “Une Operation.” 322. Droukdel, “Congratulations and Blessings”; Al-Qaeda General Command, “Support and Blessings.” 323. Alias: Hassan al-Ansari. 324. JNIM, “Founding Statement.” 325. Jeune Afrique, “À la Recherche du Jihadiste.” 326. Al-Akhbar, “Al-Murabitun”; Al Jazeera, “Organization of Al-Murabitun.” 327. Agence France-Presse, “3 New Arrests.” 328. France24, “Security Fears Mount.” 329. Ibid.; Droukdel, “Regarding Al-Murabitun.” 330. Qasimi, “Pledge to Al-Qaeda”; Nsaibia, Twitter, June 5, 2017. 331. JNIM, “Founding Statement.” 332. Agence France-Presse, “Koufa”; ICG, “‘Speaking with the “Bad Guys,’” 21; AQAP, Al-Masra no. 45, 4; Ansar al-Mujahideen, “Open Meeting,” 5. 333. “Morgan, “Sandstorm”; Al-Sahrawi, “Katibat Ansar al-Sunna.” 334. Al-Masra no. 45, 4; Tuareg Art, “Azawad,” 14:30; Thiolay, “Djihad.” 335. Agence France-Presse, “Koufa”; Thiam, “Affrontement”; Berthemet, “La Guerre,” 336. ICG, “‘Speaking with the “Bad Guys,’” 16, 24–26. 337. Kufa, “Proceed.” 338. ANI, “Signed in Blood Battalion.” 339. ICG, “Social Roots,” 4; Ndiaga Thiam, “Sur les Traces.” 340. Nsaibia, “The Jihadist Threat.” 341. Nsaibia, “Ansaroul Islam Pledging”; Arroudj, “La reddition.” 342. A. Abubakar, “Boko Haram Leader.” 343. Nsaibia, Twitter, December 21, 2018. 344. Abubakar Mainok was seemingly reported as “Abba Mainok.” Nigerian Voice, “Boko Haram Terrorists.” 345. Salkida, Twitter, March 4, 2019; Kassim, Twitter, March 11, 2019. 346. A. Abubakar, “Boko Haram Leader.” 347. Postings, Twitter, March 7, 2019. 348. Nasrullah, Twitter, October 28, 2019. 349. ISWAP, “First Burkina”; Rolbiecki, Twitter, May 5, 2019. 350. ISWAP, “Inghimasi Operations”; ISWAP, “Mukhtar Assassination.” 351. ISWAP, “Liquidating Supporters”; ISWAP, “Monguno Beheading.” 352. ISWAP, “Menaka.” 353. IS, “Eight Congolese.” 354. IS, al-Naba no. 179, 8. 355. IS, al-Naba no. 201, 3. 356. ISWAP, “Killing Two Christians,” 00:50. 357. IS, al-Naba no. 180, 8. 358. Salkida, “Boko Haram Executes Another.” 359. ISWAP, “Action Against Hunger Hostages.” 360. Sharibu, Ngaddah, and Taku remained as “slaves” as this book went to press. Olafusi, “ISWAP Kills Four.” 361. Ibid.; Salkida, “Two Lecturers.” 362. ISWAP, “UNIMAID Professor Hostages”; BBC, “Boko Haram Releases 13 Hostages.” 363. BBC, “Nigeria Shuts”; Audu, “Troops Uncover France-based NGO”; Oke, “Our Staff Was Attacked.” 364. Salkida, “Two Lecturers”; Salkida, “ISWAP Release Names.”

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365. ISWAP, “Executing Nigerian Police Supporters.” 366. Haruna, “How Five Abducted Aid Workers”; Owolabi, “Boko Haram ‘Demanded N800m Ransom.’” 367. Aymenn Al-Tamimi, “The Islamic State’s ‘Revenge’ Expedition.” 368. ISWAP, “Executing Two Chibok Christians,” 0:36. 369. ISWAP, “Executing 11 Hostages.” 370. Ibid. 371. Kassim and Nwankpa, Boko Haram Reader, 50. 372. Salkida, “ISWAP Executes.” 373. Juste Que, Twitter, December 27, 2019. 374. Aymenn Al-Tamimi, “The Islamic State’s ‘Revenge’ Expedition.” 375. Nasrullah, Twitter, August 16, 2019. 376. ISWAP, “Watching Abubakar al-Baghdadi.” See also ISWAP, “Part 2: Slay,” 18:00. 377. Salkida, Twitter, October 25, 2018. 378. ISWAP, “Child Soldier Executing.” 379. Africa Media, “Communiques,” 12; Zenn, “Twitter—Al-Urwha al-Wutqha.” 380. ISWAP, “The Outcome Is Best,” 5:06. 381. Nsaibia, Twitter, November 21, 2019. 382. ISWAP, “The Outcome Is Best,” 5:06. 383. Varghese, “ISIS Militants Kill Syrian.” 384. ISWAP, “Slay Them Wherever,” 21:25. 385. Hama, “Kidnappings Soar.” 386. Antigha, “Broader Implications.” 387. Al Jazeera, “Suicide Bomber.” 388. ICG, “Facing the Challenge,” 20. 389. ISWAP, “The Outcome Is Best,” 2:10–2:25. 390. Al Jazeera, “Over 20 Chadian Soldiers”; Reuters, “Boko Haram Attack”; Agence France-Presse, “Gunmen Kill 12 Soldiers.” 391. BH, “Greetings from Mujahideen,” 4:08–4:48, 8:50. 392. Ibid., 6:10, 7:30. 393. BH, “Patience of Men,” 4:44; BH, “Blabrine Attack”; BH, “Muna Garage Attack.” 394. Shekau, “Greetings to My Brothers.” 395. BH, “Lake Chad.” 396. Reuters, “Boko Haram Attack.” 397. BH, “Greetings from Mujahideen,” 3:58. 398. Agence France-Presse, “Money Row”; Assalafiy, “Baraka.” 399. As this book went to press, Ba Idrisa, Abu Musab, and Mustapha Kirmimma were injured or killed in March 2020 ISWAP infighting. See Al-Hussaini, “ISWAP.” 400. Salkida, Twitter, March 4, 2019. 401. Sudan Tribune, “Religious Affairs.” 402. ISWAP, “Baya’a to Abu Ibrahim”; Aymenn Al-Tamimi, “The Islamic State’s ‘Revenge’ Expedition.” See also ISWAP, “Part 2: Slay,” 18:00. 403. Kassim, Twitter, December 16, 2019; Weiss, “JNIM Addresses Detractors.” 404. BH, “Patience of Men,” 1:26. 405. BH, “Chadian Faction”; Bokar, Twitter, February 4, 2019; Foucher, Twitter, February 4, 2019; Nasrullah, “Survival and Expansion,” 11, 22. 406. SembeTV, Twitter, December 23, 2019; BH, “Greetings from Mujahideen,” 2:46; BH, “Chadian Medics.” 407. Al-Hussaini, “ISWAP; Goni, “Région de Diffa”; Bukarti, Twitter, September 3, 2019; ISWAP, “Part 2: Slay,” 2:05. 408. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 9–10; BH, “Sermons.” 409. BH, “Judgment,” 8:05–10:00. 410. BH, “Support from God,” 0:25–2:40; BH, “Judgment,” 0:10–1:10.

11 The Future of Global Jihad in Nigeria

This book is distinct from other Boko Haram histories because it exploits new research, sources, and analysis dating Nigerian jihadism to 1994 and introduces readers to local, regional, and especially international factors that catapulted Boko Haram to its meteoric rise. One key finding is that although Kanama camp events were pivotal, there has been insufficient investigation into the decade preceding its founding and how Muhammed Ali and Muhammed Yusuf came to lead Boko Haram by 2003. Kanama camp’s formation has been oversimplified, and portrayed as if it “simply happened” after Yusuf’s Izala stint and Ali’s activities abroad.1 This book, therefore, provides extensive analysis of factors that influenced the careers of Yusuf and Ali and contributed to Kanama camp’s formation but without neglecting how its destruction affected Boko Haram’s astonishing trajectory thereafter. Few could have imagined that one decade after Kanama camp’s formation Boko Haram would control swathes of territory hundreds of times larger than Kanama village, let alone become formally allied with jihadists in Iraq and Syria. This book’s timing also coincides with growing interest in Boko Haram, or specifically ISWAP. There is risk the group’s origins will receive less attention as researchers focus on current threats, emerging trends, and IS’s global influence and competition with al-Qaeda in Africa. It is hoped this book fills analytical and historical gaps about Boko Haram for those studying the group and that understanding Nigerian jihadism’s genesis and future trajectory contributes to identifying responses to the ongoing crisis. Moreover, although this study cannot provide consolation to those affected by the violence, I hope this book contributes to explaining why the events in northeastern Nigeria and the Lake Chad subregion have occurred.

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Furthermore, while Nigeria’s errors and unpreparedness for guerrilla warfare have exacerbated the security situation in northeastern Nigeria, and descriptions of ISWAP and Boko Haram as “monsters,” “miscreants,” and “evil” are rhetorically accurate, in this study I find that ISWAP and Boko Haram must also be viewed as well-structured, adaptable, intelligent, and strategic fighting groups (jamaat qatiliya) that will only benefit from adversaries’ underestimating their capabilities and their dedication to achieving their goals. Muhammed Yusuf’s dawa prepared his followers for the jihad they are now undertaking and al-Qaeda and IS have only added fuel to the “fire of jihad” (nar al-jihad) that Yusuf discussed before his death.2 This study utilized sources from Nigerian jihadists’ writings and statements and their discourses with other jihadists and Islamic scholars. These sources revealed long-standing northern Nigerian antagonism toward the Nigerian state’s insufficiently “Islamic” character. This derived from northerners’ esteem for the legacies of their region’s historical Islamic states, including their Islamic educational systems, which collapsed under colonialism and never regained prominence. However, contemporary panIslamist institutions and international Islamic charities also encouraged a return to “pure” sharia and the conflation of Muslims’ struggles globally with Nigerian Muslims’ localized struggles, which amplified disdain toward the West, Christians, and the Nigerian state. One way northern Nigerians reconciled precolonial Islamic legacies and the Nigerian state was through Izala’s approach. Disciples of Abubakar Gumi (or Ahmadu Bello before him) desired to turn the Nigerian state into a northern-centric, Islamic-influenced body cooperating with, but predominating over, majority Christian southern Nigeria, whose oil wealth the country depended on economically.3 However, this meant Salafis, and Nigerian Muslims generally, accommodated the state’s postcolonial institutions, including schools of Western education, and eventually democracy and pro-Western foreign policy. The sharia movement’s failure to produce “full sharia” due to compromises with, and pressures from, Sufis, Christians, constitutional democracy, and human rights organizations along with 9/11’s cataclysmic impact and the perception that the West and Christians were blaspheming and conspiring against Islam also engendered Izala’s evil twin: Boko Haram. Izala was not, however, the only Nigerian Islamic organization addressing tensions between Islam and Nigeria’s nondenominational state. Other Islamic organizations practiced resistance, including Ibrahim al-Zakzaky’s IMN and JTI. Yet, these organizations eventually accommodated the state, although security forces still attempted to demolish the IMN like Maitatsine and Boko Haram before it. JTI’s excesses, meanwhile, catalyzed its moderation, and Izala’s subgroup, Ahlussunnah, was sensitive to Kanama camp’s and global jihadism’s excesses and Saudi influence. Ahlussunnah, therefore, also moderated and accommodated the state.

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Thus, there were internal organizational and domestic and external forces pushing Islamic, and especially Salafi, organizations toward accommodating the state. However, one constant was these organizations’ recognizing and seeking to avoid the ideological extremes and inevitable violence involved in confronting the state. In addition, the rise of the two most significant Islamic organizations influencing Muhammed Yusuf’s early career trajectory, al-Zakzaky’s movement and Izala, was inseparable from Saudi and Iranian, if not also Libyan, geopolitical competition. These two organizations would not have generated such intense antistate animus and pan-Islamist leanings but for external ideological and financial support. Boko Haram also adopted the resistance approach but never accommodated the state like other Islamic organizations. Rather, the demands of various Islamic organizations that accommodated the state, including implementing “full sharia” and opposing schools of Western education, Christianity, and democracy, became encapsulated in Boko Haram. This was because from 1994, Boko Haram overlapped ideologically with those Islamic organizations, but Boko Haram additionally internalized jihadist thought from leaders like Muhammed Ali, who interacted with global jihadists. Ali and his followers believed not only that it was religiously lawful to wage war (jihad) against Nigeria, but also that they had to match talk with action. Moreover, abandoning or rejecting the legitimacy of jihad against the state was apostasy. No other group, including al-Zakzaky’s movement, JTI, or Ahlussunnah, featured jihad in its ideology and leaders’ own histories as much as Boko Haram. When those other groups stopped resisting the state, Boko Haram continued resistance. Boko Haram was, therefore, more of a resistance and jihadist group than any other Nigerian Islamic organization. The group’s resistance derived from Maitatsine’s, al-Zakzaky’s, Izala’s and Ahlussunnah’s influences. Its jihadism derived from Ahlussunnah’s scholars’ pro-al-Qaeda rhetoric and networks with pan-Islamist institutions and from Muhammed Ali and his followers’ interactions with the GSPC, Bin Laden’s deputies, and al-Qaeda envoys and operatives. Thus, when Kanama camp formed, the group self-identified as the Afghan Taliban’s Nigerian representative, and there was no turning back on the goal of establishing a dawla. It is vital to bear in mind that no other Nigerian Islamic group with a sizable following shared the same jihadist identity as Kanama camp members or had equivalent ties to global jihadists. And that made Boko Haram unique. A key contribution to the literature of this finding is that it challenges common explanations for Boko Haram’s origins—such as that university dropouts in Maiduguri destroyed their graduate certificates out of dissatisfaction with joblessness and corruption and only then became “indoctrinated” by “radical ideologies.” Rather, this study finds by the time of Kanama camp’s formation, Boko Haram, including its recruits from northern

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Nigerian universities and Yobe and Borno mosques, already comprised a jihadist community, whose main grievance was Nigeria’s not being an Islamic state. And their solution was jihad. Jihadist Exceptionalism Because Ahlussunnah scholars never had experiences with global jihadists to the extent of Kanama camp leaders but possessed career opportunities through patronage networks with the Nigerian state and pan-Islamist institutions and began to understand the dangers of jihadism, they readily withdrew from the jihadist community by 2003. These scholars continued respected religious and political careers while nominally calling for some organization to “defend Muslims” in Nigeria. Kanama camp members, in contrast, never followed that path because it was apostasy, according to the jihadist thought introduced in Nigeria since at least 1994. Moreover, unlike Salafi scholars who eventually opposed global jihad and had much to lose from jihad in Nigeria, Kanama camp members were ostracized from mainstream Islam in Nigeria after Kanama camp’s fall and continued with the jihadist project. Muhammed Yusuf played a crucial role after 2004 despite previously preaching with mainstream Salafi scholars because Yusuf dedicated his career to resisting the state, reincorporated Kanama camp members, preached for jihad, and accepted “martyrdom” as his fate. Despite having less experience with global jihadists than Muhammed Ali and other Kanama camp members, Yusuf developed sufficient Salafi literacy to thwart mainstream Islamic scholars’ attempts to discredit him while earning sufficient respect from late Ali’s followers because of his pro-jihad advocacy. Yusuf’s interactions with Kanama camp members also enabled him to imbibe jihadism more profoundly than other Nigerian Salafi scholars who rhetorically supported al-Qaeda after 9/11 but only peripherally interacted with Kanama camp members. Thus, Yusuf’s path into jihadism was through direct exposure to Ali and other Kanama camp members and indirectly through studying jihadist literature and the failures of Izala, al-Zakzaky, JTI, the Muslim Brotherhood, and various other non-jihadist Islamic movements to create “pure” Islamic societies resembling Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. If Yusuf only became certain of the righteousness of al-Qaeda’s methodology for establishing an Islamic state after 9/11, he remained even more committed to that methodology by his 2009 death. He, therefore, charted the group’s course into the global jihadist movement under Abubakar Shekau from 2010 onward. A further consequence of Boko Haram’s being a jihadist group from day one was its receiving haven from Sahel-based GSPC and AQIM allies after the 2003 and 2009 crackdowns. These were global jihadist alliance “perks” that, in contrast, Maitatsine’s and al-Zakzaky’s followers never

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benefited from when Nigeria’s government decimated them. Ostensibly alZakzaky had Iranian backing, but even Iran diverted support to other Shia groups more accommodating of the Nigerian state. Furthermore, Iran lacked immediate support networks for al-Zakzaky’s followers in West Africa like the GSPC and AQIM established to support Boko Haram and other regional jihadists. Regional jihadist support further contributed to Boko Haram’s evolution when members received training, weapons, and financial support from AQIM and, to a lesser extent, al-Shabaab. Boko Haram’s widespread suicide car bombing campaign would not have occurred without this cooperation. Similarly, the group conquered territory after AQIM and allied jihadist groups occupied northern Mali and jihadists dispersed from there, including Nigerians. Evidence is compelling that experienced AQIM-allied, Malibased, and former Ansaru militants contributed to Boko Haram’s international kidnapping operations in Cameroon, barracks raids in Borno, and territorial conquests starting in 2013. This is another example of how understanding Boko Haram in a regional context and in terms of global jihadist alliances is critical, especially because conquering territory elevated Boko Haram from threatening lives and property in Nigeria to also becoming a persistent threat to Nigeria’s territorial integrity. While Kanama camp’s 2003 formation and the 2009–2010 crackdown and launch of jihad are rightly considered key transitions in virtually all literature on Boko Haram, this book finds the 1994 origins of Nigeria’s jihadist community and 2013 conquest of territory were also decisive transitions that have been insufficiently investigated. It is hoped this book provides clarity on these two periods, if not also the 2016 and 2019 ISWAP leadership reorganizations, which were also major transitions. Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, and the International Dimension Boko Haram’s unprecedented conquest of territory in northeastern Nigeria, which was the most important military achievement in the group’s history, was not necessarily intended from AQIM trainings. Rather, suicide car bombings on churches and government buildings and kidnappings of Westerners for ransom were predictable outcomes. In addition, the moderate jihadist thought embodied in Ansaru and inherited by some ISWAP members had important ideational influence. However, AQIM did not maintain the alliance with Boko Haram because AQIM’s capital was primarily material, including training, money, and weapons. Moreover, its strategic and ideological advice was ignored by Shekau and Boko Haram members who desired revenge after the July 2009 crackdown, especially against the Nigerian state, low-level officials, and

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Izala “collaborators,” and envisioned establishing a dawla. Shekau’s approach was, therefore, incompatible with AQIM’s patient, long-term, and symbolic attack strategy targeting Westerners, “Crusader” churches, and Nigerian government buildings. AQIM support, therefore, proved less significant than IS’s legitimization of Boko Haram’s dawla with “province” status through ISWAP’s formation. So important was IS ideational capital compared to AQIM that ISWAP leaders have respected IS orders regarding dealing with civilians and captives, conducting the war, and reorganizing leadership. Ideational capital, especially the caliphate vision, proved more potent than material capital. The ISWAP-IS relationship has been bound by loyalty (baya), as much as, if not more than, financing, weapons, or trainings. This emphasizes the importance of ideology in jihadist alliances compared to incentives undergirding alliances in nonmilitant organizations, such as companies, revolving around money. IS could rely on ISWAP leaders to kill the two female ICRC aid workers, release the Dapchi girls, or purge Mamman Nur because of the caliphate’s authority. Through the transmission to ISWAP of IS ideology, ISWAP’s loyalty to IS leaders, and ISWAP’s coordination of media with IS, if not also ISWAP’s meetings with IS members in Libya and Nigeria, ISWAP gradually assumed IS’s identity. This was evidenced symbolically through ISWAP’s adoption of the Guantanamostyle jumpsuit in execution videos. “Unmasking” Boko Haram in this book, however, also involved highlighting how individual jihadists balanced personal, ideological, and financial incentives when forming alliances and conducting the war. Abu Musab and Mamman Nur, for example, had motives for joining IS concerning moderating ISWAP and sidelining Shekau, but also recognized that Abubakar al-Baghdadi was a legitimate caliph on theological grounds. Ansaru was also founded primarily for ideological reasons, including opposing Shekau’s ruthlessness and attacking AQIM-recommended targets in Nigeria. However, some members exploited their combat skill to accumulate personal wealth instead of focusing on jihad while others eventually even cooperated with Shekau and ISWAP. Shekau himself offered a compelling case study in Stalinist leadership in a jihadist movement. He dominated every group he led since 2009 with such an iron fist few commanders survived his wrath. Moreover, he persisted as a leader for over a decade after succeeding Muhammed Yusuf even though both jihadists and Nigerian soldiers tried to kill him. Like Stalin and other authoritarians, ruthlessness can be a means to long-term power. Contrary to depictions of Shekau as deranged, he has articulated a central theology, established alliances, and delegated authority “as a strategy for sustainability” for his group and especially his leadership.4 Shekau wisely allied with AQIM for Boko Haram’s material benefit but ended the

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relationship when AQIM’s advice contravened his vision for Boko Haram and jeopardized his unrivaled leadership. He then formally allied with IS under pressure from rival commanders because he wanted to keep the group unified and even accepted restrictions on his cherished media appearances while leading ISWAP. Nevertheless, he later was ejected from ISWAP because he never compromised his theology, but he also never renounced loyalty to IS, which left a sliver of an opening available for a future alliance with IS and ensured his loyalists did not abandon him. Moreover, Shekau’s apparent reincorporation of ISWAP defectors and other jihadists in the Lake Chad subregion in 2019 may enable Boko Haram to challenge Shekau’s “murjite” adversaries in ISWAP once again. Future Trajectories The future of ISWAP, Boko Haram, and Ansaru will be determined by international, regional, national, and local interactions. Internationally, the fall of the IS “territorial caliphate” means IS’s credibility is damaged. Until IS regains territory in Iraq and Syria, if it ever does, its external provinces will be increasingly vital to its project. IS intervention in ISWAP leadership not once, when it named Abu Musab as ISWAP leader, but twice, when it ordered Mamman Nur’s purging, leading to Abu Musab’s sidelining, indicates IS has commanded ISWAP leaders’ loyalty. This loyalty will likely continue for the majority of ISWAP members. However, whether IS can actually resource and equip ISWAP will depend on IS forces in Libya continuing exchanges with ISWAP and IS’s centralized leadership rebuilding its financial coffers, both of which are uncertain. Nevertheless, the pressure IS members in Libya now face and the near impossibility of their traveling to Iraq or Syria means fighting with ISWAP or ISGS may become their most viable option. If IS never reclaims its “territorial caliphate” and al-Baghdadi’s successor never commands the legitimacy that al-Baghdadi had, IS will require especially committed ISWAP leaders to not abandon the IS project. It cannot be discounted that if some ISWAP leaders abandon IS or reconsider loyalty to al-Qaeda, then some IS hard-liners may reconsider naming Shekau as leader because his ideology, if not character, resembles that of IS hard-liners, and there is little risk of al-Qaeda’s welcoming Shekau again. Moreover, as settled as Shekau is in Sambisa, he still emulates IS and respects its legitimacy. Fractures in IS could even lead to IS moderates’ favoring one ISWAP faction and IS hard-liners’ favoring another faction, including ISWAP’s “Shekau-like” commanders who became empowered after the March 2019 leadership reorganization. Whenever Shekau dies, it will also present unique opportunities for ISWAP to rehabilitate and reintegrate his loyalists

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and expand ISWAP’s fighter numbers and reach in southern Borno. Alternatively, Boko Haram fighters may prove too extreme for ISWAP and factionalize themselves or join ISWAP hard-liners in a new group or faction, which would further complicate the region’s jihadist map. If one thing appears clear, it is that Shekau has left no succession plan in place for after he dies, unlike Muhammed Yusuf did before his death. The Sahel has also presented opportunities and challenges for IS. Because IS could not win the loyalty of formal al-Qaeda affiliates when IS held the “territorial caliphate,” one might have expected IS to struggle once the “territorial caliphate” was lost, especially in the Sahel. Al-Qaeda withstood most challenges to its supremacy over the global jihadist movement from IS, and in the Sahel AQIM, or specifically JNIM, had been stronger than IS until late 2019. What happened was ISWAP and ISGS became more important for IS’s future once the “territorial caliphate” was lost, and IS successfully “shaped” their leaderships in a way that kept loyalists at the helms of both groups. The enduring vision of the caliphate, ISGS’s successful recruitment in the Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso tri-border region, and ISGS’s incorporation into ISWAP have facilitated ISGS’s rivaling JNIM in the Sahel and ISWAP’s remaining loyal to IS and outmatching Boko Haram. Since the fall of IS’s “territorial caliphate,” conditions in Mali and neighboring countries have remained conducive for both IS and al-Qaeda-loyal groups. They both benefit from employing AQIM’s historic playbook, allying with embattled Muslim groups, especially Fulanis, and exploiting Mali and neighboring countries’ inability to reclaim the mandate over their territory, especially rural border regions. Thus, ISGS’s rapid acceleration in capabilities since March 2019 and ability to contest JNIM for jihadist preeminence in the Sahel came suddenly, but demonstrated that the Sahel provides fertile terrain for both ISGS and JNIM to recruit and expand operations. AQIM, and especially JNIM, will continue conducting attacks on government and military targets, schools, uncooperative village leaders, and occasionally Western targets in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and their borderlands or neighboring countries. IS, meanwhile, will continue leveraging ISWAP to become a bona fide West Africa Province extending beyond northeastern Nigeria and the Lake Chad subregion and actually uniting with ISGS in the Sahel and northwestern Nigeria, despite geographic, cultural, and linguistic barriers between ISWAP and ISGS operational areas. Although ISWAP has subsumed ISGS, they will remain territorially detached unless they converge in the Sahel or northwestern Nigeria or across the border in Niger, which requires ISWAP overlapping with, or operating alongside, Ansaru and recruiting Fulanis, especially those involved in banditry. This may involve complications related to ISWAP’s moderates’ being more compatible with Ansaru than ISWAP’s hard-liners, but ISWAP’s hard-liners’ being more compatible with ISGS. If history is

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any indication, jihadist factionalization in northwestern Nigeria will be as constant as it has been in northeastern Nigeria and the Lake Chad subregion, and infighting cannot be ruled out. The rapid deterioration of Sahelian countries’ security since 2015, especially Burkina Faso, which had never experienced jihadist attacks before then, should also serve as a warning about what could become of northwestern Nigeria if emerging ISWAP and Ansaru cells in the region are not nipped in the bud. AQIM’s relative moderation compared to IS means any ISWAP members disaffected by the IS-sanctioned purge of Mamman Nur and sidelining of Abu Musab may consider returning to the al-Qaeda fold. Their loyalists would have reason to reassess loyalty to IS and reconsider loyalty to alQaeda, especially after al-Baghdadi’s death. Therefore, cooperation between disaffected ISWAP members and Sahel-based al-Qaeda-loyal jihadists in JNIM and Ansaru remains possible. Signs of Ansaru’s operating in northwestern Nigeria imply if pro-Nur or pro–Abu Musab ISWAP members realign with al-Qaeda, they would shift to northwestern Nigeria near Ansaru’s historic operational areas because ISWAP hard-liners would kill defectors in northeastern Nigeria. Although Ansaru’s drift into excessive criminality deviated from its theologically oriented founding mission, al-Qaeda-loyal groups in Mali, especially JNIM’s former Katiba Macina members, have histories with banditry, Fulani-targeted recruitment, and jihadism. These characteristics are similar to Ansaru, which means Ansaru could fit in with them just as it did with Belmokhtar in previous years. However, Ansaru would need to reorient itself toward prioritizing al-Qaeda’s jihadist political and ideological goals, like Belmokhtar did in his career. The maturity and experience of ISWAP’s relative moderates, therefore, could potentially provide an ideological and operational boost for Ansaru. The consequences of al-Qaeda’s reemerging in Nigeria through JNIM, a revived Ansaru, or a new brigade are twofold: first, northwestern Nigeria and central Nigeria could become jihadist fronts again; and second, there would be greater potential for kidnappings of Westerners and special operations targeting major government buildings or international hotels like those launched by Belmokhtar’s Katibat Muwaqiun Bidima and al-Murabitun in 2013 and 2015. Among the indicators that jihadism has taken root in northwestern Nigeria will be, first, growing media operations by Ansaru and ISWAP to highlight their presence there and, second, the introduction of new tactics into that region that bandits have generally not employed. These would include, for example, burning down schools of Western education or assassinating progovernment village chiefs and destroying government facilities. ISWAP has not focused on targeting the “far enemy” in Nigeria, while Sahel-based al-Qaeda-loyal groups have not dropped those attacks from their repertoires. Nevertheless, ISWAP’s fracturing and IS’s need to demonstrate its relevance despite losing its “territorial caliphate” could lead it to direct

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ISWAP to launch attacks on Western targets to gain international attention and demonstrate the caliphate’s global reach. Moreover, IS fighters’ diffusion from Iraq and Syria to North Africa may lead some of them and formerly Libya-based IS members to arrive in the Sahel and Lake Chad subregion to fight with ISGS and ISWAP. While skills can be conveyed through encrypted online communications, in-person training like that offered by AQIM to Boko Haram in 2009–2010 and Libya-based IS members to ISWAP in 2015, has greater impact. ISWAP can, therefore, be expected to maintain a hold on its territories in the Lake Chad subregion, possibly be aided by IS members relocating to the Lake Chad subregion, and to prioritize controlling territory (tamkin). For the foreseeable future, ISWAP will remain preeminent in the Lake Chad subregion, especially in Kanuri areas where it has always operated more effectively than in Hausa areas, and may eventually become the long-term de facto governing authority there. Combating Boko Haram ISWAP and Boko Haram operations from Lake Chad to Sambisa and potentially resurgent Ansaru, if not also ISWAP, members in northwestern Nigeria mean solutions require dealing with each group distinctly. Moreover, combating three groups complicates matters. For example, IS influence on ISWAP leadership means negotiations, especially for cease-fires, if they are possible, could reach IS leadership, which would oppose them. Then, any ISWAP commanders who violated IS orders against negotiations would risk elimination by IS for their insubordination. Even if individual commanders at times surrender, ISWAP, or any successor group, will likely not negotiate peace unless fighting continues for several more decades. By then, Nigeria may be convinced it cannot subdue ISWAP and sue for a deal to cease hostilities, which ISWAP’s relatively moderate and al-Qaeda-neutral factions would manipulate to acquire political and religious authority in parts of Borno. Otherwise, as one Boko Haram fighter noted, the jihad will not stop “unless [the government] surrenders and rules according to the Islamic sharia or we die in [jihad].”5 The lesson from the US experience with the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11 is not that negotiations can occur with jihadists, but rather that jihadists like ISWAP will not deal until they have tamkin or terms favor them. Otherwise, martyrdom is preferred. Moreover, the record demonstrates transactional deals are possible with ISWAP, Boko Haram, and Ansaru, especially exchanging hostages for money and imprisoned members. However, these transactions work in the jihadists’ favor because they can replenish their finances through exchanges and abduct more hostages and engage in new transactions. While sometimes politically necessary for governments, including Nigeria, because of public pressure and humanitarianism, such exchanges are unsustainable.

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Short-term tactical cease-fires are also possible between Nigeria’s government and the jihadists, such as when ISWAP returned the Dapchi schoolgirls. However, government legitimacy is undermined when making concessions to the jihadists, while such agreements also create risks for jihadists engaging the government on reducing hostilities, because it leaves them vulnerable to charges of apostasy by hard-liners. It is also possible for the military to avoid combating the jihadists directly, especially Shekau’s fighters, who have not faced as much pressure as ISWAP in their Sambisa “mini-state,” and hope the jihadists collapse through internal dissent. While it is problematic from humanitarian perspectives to allow Boko Haram to hold captives, or “slaves,” in its territory, such “containment” could lead to the group’s decline resulting from the inanity of Shekau’s rule and infighting. Alternatively, history suggests this could also allow Shekau’s fighters space to train, recruit, and become even stronger if the group can remain unified. Cease-fires with ISWAP are more problematic than with Boko Haram because of ISWAP’s capability to maintain governance structures in its dawla. Controlling territory unobstructed around Lake Chad only enhances ISWAP’s economic sustainability. One way the government could respond to Boko Haram and ISWAP, therefore, is by adopting a containment model toward the former and a subregional military strategy toward the latter, aimed at blocking supply lines and undermining ISWAP’s economic vitality. However, protecting Nigeria’s borders would have to be done much more intensively than it has ever been done previously. An unrelenting challenge to combating ISWAP specifically in the Lake Chad subregion has been the porousness of borders. Whereas IS in Syria in 2019 could not easily escape the US-backed onslaughts to retreat into Turkey, Jordan, or Iraq, ISWAP easily filters into neighboring countries. There is highly conducive marshland, forest, and desert terrain to enable ISWAP fighters’ movements throughout the subregion, as well as villagers from the same linguistic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds on all sides of the borders to facilitate the jihadists’ assimilation into local communities in the border region. A containment approach focused on preventing ISWAP from spilling over into neighboring countries and becoming “someone else’s problem” once pressure mounts in Nigeria is, therefore, necessary, which further requires intensive border protection. Leadership decapitation is another option, although it can lead to unpredictable consequences. For example, killing Shekau could enable Boko Haram and ISWAP to reunite and become stronger. Alternatively, killing ISWAP leaders could empower hard-liners sympathetic to Shekau’s ideology, also resulting in their uniting and increasingly targeting women for abduction. Moreover, killing leaders can immortalize them as martyrs, like Muhammed Yusuf.

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Additionally, while airstrikes can create intra-jihadist suspicion about spies and force jihadist leaders into deep hiding, blowback from airstrikes that kill civilians collaterally and that do not diminish the grassroots fighters’ ranks limit airstrikes’ utility. Nigeria’s government and people are also reluctant to allow neighbors, let alone foreign powers, to intervene to counter ISWAP and Boko Haram. Thus, air campaigns against ISWAP or Boko Haram resembling those destroying the IS “territorial caliphate” in 2019 are unlikely in Nigeria. Developmental approaches involve building up infrastructure, including health clinics, schools, and markets, to combat jihadist recruitment. It is important, however, that expectations for rural northeastern Nigeria are not overly ambitious. Even modest economic, vocational, and educational improvements for villagers could lead them to identify more with the state and less with jihadists seeking to establish dawlas. Because many rural-based fighters were recruited only after Boko Haram began conquering territory and sometimes forcibly, their path out of the group may lie more in finding new livelihoods and receiving trauma counseling than ideological deradicalization. Nevertheless, economic development cannot solve the crisis. Nigeria and its neighbors all face severe governance and accountability crises due to ethnic, linguistic, and religious polarization; weak identification with the postcolonial state; corrupting effects of nepotism and patronage networks; poverty; illiteracy; women’s disempowerment; desertification; and the “resource curse,” the latter especially in Nigeria’s case. Thus, expecting Nigeria and neighbors to rapidly reverse course and become models of good governance in ways promoting sustainable economic growth will require longer-term time horizons—decades, most likely—than needed to quash ISWAP. Moreover, it was not masses of undereducated or unemployed youths initially forming Kanama camp, but rather boko-educated elites exposed to Salafi-jihadi ideology. Muhammed Yusuf’s preaching and the Salafi reference points he cited to justify his theology attracted followers to him over rival preachers not because his proto-state necessarily offered better economic incentives than other Islamic organizations. Rather, Yusuf’s success was predicated on the cogency of his theology and underlying message. The practical way forward—that does not involve either the unacceptable outcome to the Nigerian government of ceding territory to ISWAP or Boko Haram and allowing them to establish autonomous dawlas or massive internationally backed military operations that aid organizations oppose on humanitarian grounds, if not also because they doubt their effectiveness— is adopting negotiation, military containment, and developmental strategies together. They must then be implemented as accountably as possible alongside programs reintegrating captured fighters and defectors from the jihad

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into their original communities or elsewhere outside combat zones. In some cases, deradicalization may work, especially when, as with Abu Aisha, fighters are alienated by Shekau-like leaders. In other cases, however, deradicalization will prove difficult, especially because ISWAP and Boko Haram members are more ideologically hardened after ten years of incessant combat than they were even during Muhammed Yusuf’s lifetime. Moreover, their children may know little outside of jihadist ideology and war and become the next generation of fighters. ISWAP engages in intense violence, but its demand for an Islamic state while making no accommodation with the Nigerian state is neither novel nor particularly extreme in Nigeria, especially in historical perspective. Additionally, ISWAP’s violence has been predominantly aimed at Nigeria’s government and military, not civilians, at least from the August 2016 leadership split until the March 2019 leadership reorganization. Therefore, ISWAP betrays simplistic labels as “terrorist” or “extremist.” While internal debates within Nigeria’s jihadist movement have been over takfir, disagreements between jihadists and mainstream Salafis in Nigeria have been over the legitimacy of global jihad, constitutional democracy, and boko. Mainstream Salafis now embrace the latter two but oppose global jihad and regret their former pro–Bin Ladenism. ISWAP, meanwhile, promotes global jihad and opposes constitutional democracy and boko and has demonstrated sufficient ideological credibility to continue to win recruits to its cause, including educated elites. Moreover, while ISWAP benefits from receiving IS’s legitimization, it also benefits from immersing more locally than Nigerian soldiers coming from all over the country and based in military-protected zones rather than embedded within the predominantly Kanuri Borno population. One antidote to the “Boko Haram phenomenon” may be the jihadists themselves. Since the devastation Boko Haram has wrought has become so widespread, Salafi organizations like Izala whose offshoots evolved into Boko Haram have become increasingly nonconfrontational in promoting their agendas, similar to other Nigerian Islamic groups, especially Sufis, who inherited Usman dan Fodio’s theological legacy but are now primarily pacifistic. A lesson learned from the Boko Haram experience, therefore, is the danger of exploiting pan-Islamism and global jihadism to pursue localized theological objectives. It is not necessarily the case that if Boko Haram were defeated “another one would emerge,” as is commonly asserted. As problematic as structural issues in northern Nigeria are, the agency and entrepreneurialism of Boko Haram’s leaders, including Muhammed Ali, Muhammed Yusuf, and Shekau, and the unique national, regional, and international interactions that contributed to Boko Haram’s emergence, must be acknowledged. These will not be replicated.

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It is also the jihadists’ violence more than the core theological arguments of Muhammed Yusuf and his successors that has been discredited. The jihadist ideology will survive in the long term regardless of ISWAP’s and Boko Haram’s fate and rest on the same grounds that made Yusuf’s preaching cogent. The desire for an Islamic state is a perpetual challenge with which the postcolonial Nigerian state will always have to grapple, but jihadism need not be inevitable. Violence to achieve religious goals, including a dawla and “full sharia,” finds little traction today outside of ISWAP, Boko Haram, and Ansaru. Nevertheless, the cat (ISWAP) is already out of the bag, and it can become the straw that breaks the camel’s back (Nigeria’s potential disintegration along religious, ethnic, and regional lines and the “breaking of borders” between Nigeria and neighboring countries) in a worst-case scenario. The task is defeating the jihadist groups militarily while developing accountable developmental solutions to mitigate conflict and reintegrate former fighters and displaced civilians. The hope is once these jihadist groups are defeated in battle, prosharia and pro-Islamic state agitation can be debated and resolved civilly within Nigeria’s state structures. If this occurs, the idea of global jihad as the solution for Nigerian Muslims will become obsolete and the “Boko Haram phenomenon” can reach its end. 1. See also Hegghammer, Caravan, 2. 2. Al-Barnawi, Slicing Off the Tumor, 12. 3. Paden, Ahmadu Bello, 541; Bello, “Northernization.” 4. Atta Barkindo, “Abubakr Shekau,” 55. 5. As-Sawarim, “Interview.”

Notes

Appendix 1: Nigerian Heads of State and Associated Key Events Since 1976

1978 1979

Izala founding Iranian Islamic Revolution

1980 1982

Kano Maitatsine clashes Maiduguri Maitatsine clashes

1984

Adamawa Maitatsine clashes

1987 1990 1991 1992

Kafanchan Muslim-Christian clashes Persian Gulf War begins Osama bin Laden arrives in Sudan Zango-Kataf Muslim-Christian clashes

1993 1994 1994 1996

Ahlussunnah formation Algerian jihadists arrive in Nigeria Nigerian jihadists in Sudan Osama bin Laden returns to Afghanistan

1998

Al-Qaeda attacks US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania

Olusegun Obasanjo (1976–1979)

Shehu Shagari (1979–1983)

Muhammadu Buhari (1983–1985)

Ibrahim Babangida (1985–1993)

Sani Abacha (1993–1997)

Ernest Shonekan and Abdulsalami Abubakar (1998–1999)

333

334

Appendixes

1999 2001 2002 2002 2003 2003 2003 2004

Sharia implementation begins in northern Nigeria 9/11 and Nigerian pro–Bin Laden demonstrations Boko Haram founding ThisDay publishes “blasphemous” article United States invades Iraq Al-Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia Kanama camp destruction Yelwa-Shendam Muslim-Christian clashes

2007 2009

Shaikh Jaafar assassination Boko Haram uprising

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2014 2015

Abubakar Shekau declares jihad Boko Haram’s first suicide bombings Ansaru founding Boko Haram conquers territory Abubakar al-Baghdadi declares caliphate Abubakar Shekau announces “Islamic state” in Borno ISWAP formation

2016 2019

ISWAP leadership split ISWAP leadership reorganization

Olusegun Obasanjo (1999–2007)

Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (2007–2010)

Goodluck Jonathan (2010–2015)

Muhammadu Buhari (2015–present)

Appendix 2: Boko Haram Leadership Time Line

1994–2001: Hassan Allane (GIA/GSPC networks), Muhammed Ali (Nigerian and Sudan/Sahel networks), Yusuf Ahmed (diaspora and alQaeda/GSPC networks) Phase 1: Prefounding Jihadist Community

2002–2003: Muhammed Ali and Muhammed Yusuf (“Kanama brothers”) Phase 2: Founding and First Jihad

2004–2009: Muhammed Yusuf (Yusufiya) Phase 3: Preaching Interregnum

2010–March 2015: Abubakar Shekau (Boko Haram) 2012–2013: Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe—alias Abu Usama alAnsari, same as his successor—(Ansaru) 2013–present: Abu Usama al-Ansari (Ansaru), no communications since January 2017 Phase 4: Second Jihad

March 2015–August 2016: Abubakar Shekau (ISWAP) August 2016–March 2019: Abu Musab al-Barnawi (ISWAP) August 2016–present: Abubakar Shekau (Boko Haram) Phase 5: Islamic State Era

March 2019–present: Ba Idrisa (ISWAP), never formally recognized by the Islamic State Phase 6: Post–Islamic State Territorial Caliphate Era

335

Acronyms

ABU AFRICOM ANI AQAP AQIM BOCOLIS BUK CAN CIA CJTF FBI FIS GIA GIMF GSPC ICRC IDP IIRO IJU IMN IMU IS ISERI ISGS ISI ISIS

Ahmadu Bello University US Africa Command Agence Nouakchott d’information Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb Borno College of Legal and Islamic Studies Bayero University Kano Christian Association of Nigeria Central Intelligence Agency Civilian Joint Task Force Federal Bureau of Investigation Islamic Salvation Front Armed Islamic Group Global Islamic Media Front Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat International Committee of the Red Cross internally displaced person International Islamic Relief Organization Islamic Jihad Union Islamic Movement in Nigeria Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan Islamic State Advanced Institute for Islamic Studies and Research Islamic State in Greater Sahara Islamic State of Iraq Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

337

338

Acronyms

ISWAP IUM IZALA

JNI JNIM JTI KSM MEND MSS MUJWA MWL NACOMYO OIC SCSN SSS UN WAMY

Islamic State in West Africa Province Islamic University in Medina Society Committed to the Removal of Innovation and Establishment of the Sunnah Society for Support of Islam Group for Supporters of Islam and Muslims Movement for Islamic Revival Khalid Shaikh Muhammed Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta Muslim Students Society Movement for Unity (Monotheism) and Jihad in West Africa Muslim World League National Council of Muslim Youths Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (formerly the Organization of the Islamic Conference) Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria State Security Service United Nations World Assembly of Muslim Youth

Glossary

abu: father (of) ahl al-kheir: good people/moderates Ahlussunnah: (Salafi) followers of traditional Islamic law alhaji: elder, or one who performed pilgrimage to Mecca almajiri: itinerant Islamic student al-Andalus: Muslim Spain al-Barnawi: from Borno al-bayan: the statement al-naba: the announcement al-qaeda: the base al-risalah: the message al-shabaab: the youths al-wala wal-bara: loyalty and disavowal ansar: (local) supporter aqida: creed battar: sword (of the Prophet) baya: loyalty pledge bida: innovation bilad: country/land burqa: Islamic full-body clothing for women caliph: Islamic ruler caliphate: Islamic state/empire

dawa: inviting others to become Muslim, or “more Muslim,” by preaching dawla: state dawra: tour/rotation dhimmi: non-Muslim subject to Islamic law din: religion emir: prince/commander Eid al-Fitr: Muslim holiday marking end of Ramadan fai: wealth stolen from unbelievers fard ‘ayn: obligatory on the individual (regarding jihad) fatwa: Islamic legal opinion fiqh: Islamic jurisprudence ghalaw: extremism/chauvinism ghanima: spoils hadith: sayings of Prophet Muhammad hajj: pilgrimage to Mecca after Ramadan hijab: Islamic head covering hijra: migration to flee persecution hijri: Islamic lunar calendar

339

340

Glossary

hisba: sharia accountability/Islamic morality enforcement ifrat: excesses ijaza: permission/accreditation imam: prayer leader inghimasi: immersion by fighting until death inhiraf: deviance iqamat al-hujja: providing Islamic proof irtibat: ties istishhad: self-martyrdom/suicide bombing itisilat: contacts jahl: ignorance/pre-Islamic darkness jamaa qatiliya: fighting group jihad: struggle/war kafir: infidel katiba: brigade khawarij: outsiders/rebels leaving the fold of Islam khutba: sermon Maghreb: northwestern Africa/Morocco mahdi: eschatological redeemer of Islam maitatsine: the one who curses mallam: scholar/teacher manhaj: methodology muhajir(un): emigrant(s)/foreign fighter(s) mujaddid: renewer of the faith mujahid(in): jihadist(s) munafiq: hypocrite

munsifun: moderates murabitun: guarders of the fortress murjism: postponing declaring takfir murtad: apostate nasheed: Islamic hymn rafidh: (Shia) rejecter of the Prophet Muhammad’s legitimate line of succession ribat: guarding the fortress Salafism: Islamic practice based on original or “pure” Sunni Islam shabaab: youths shahada: Islamic testimony of faith sharia: Islamic law shaikh: Islamic spiritual leader shirk: polytheism shura: consultative council sulhu: peace/ceasefire sunna: traditional Islamic law tafsir: Quranic interpretation taghut: tyrant, un-Islamic ruler takfir: excommunicating a Muslim and declaring him/her an infidel taqiya: (Shia) dissimulation taslim: acceptance/reconciliation tawasul: connection tawhid: monotheism tazkiya: vouching ulama: scholars umma: global Muslim community Wahhabism: Salafism originating from Saudi Arabia wali: governor wilaya: province

Bibliography

Note: Due to the nature of this research, a wide range of sources was employed—some of them originally available online. Since online content experiences frequent censorship, the original versions of sources were retained, compiled, and are now maintained on this book’s companion website: https://unmaskingbokoharam.com. In addition, many sources predating 2012 are available through this companion website as they are no longer available on their original websites.

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Index

Abba Aji, 106–107, 127 Abba al-Barnawi (Abba Yazeed), 238, 267, 275–277; strategic communications, 308 Abba Malla, 219, 221, 278 Abdelmalek Droukdel (Abu Musab Abd alWadud), 60, 149–155, 157–161, 163–165; Abu Zeid, 205; Christians, 149; Mokhtar Belmokhtar, 109, 110; Radisson Blu attack, 298; scholarly support, 192; sharia, 190; Shekau, 174–175, 216; targeting advice, 150, 171–173, 176, 179, 182–184, 186 Abdoulaye Malla, 219 abductive reasoning, 11–13 Abdullah al-Shinqiti, 157, 190, 199, 203, 205, 260; background, 187–188; death, 205; October 2011 shura letter, 188, 195, 220, 230, 232, 277 Abdullah Azzam, 20, 22, 39–40, 98, 161, 215; Arizona, 27; assassination, 22; Join the Caravan, 116, 155; Muhammed Yusuf, 129; Shekau, 161; Virginia, 215 Abdullahi Diyar, 89, 94 n. 199, 96, 234–235, 299 Abdulwahhab Abdullah, 78, 124 Abu Aisha, 74, 101, 103, 123, 164, 190, 202, 232; Boko Haram name, 115; interview, 39; Kanama camp, 39, 90, 97, 105–108; Muhammed Ali, 24–26, 36, 51, 87, 97, 101, 105–106; Muhammed Yusuf, 99, 108–109, 115, 128, 136; Shekau, 99, 136, 188, 192, 231, 236, 277; takfir, 97–98 Abu al-Hassan Rasheed al-Bulaydi, 188, 190, 204, 232, 262 Abu Asim al-Sudani al-Fallata, 272

Abu Bakr Naji, 61 Abu Fatima, 173, 194, 199, 212, 243 n. 227; Mommudu Abu Fatima, 220 Abu Fatima al-Salafi, 220 Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, 305, 309 Abu Isa al-Amriki (Abu Saad al-Sudani), 268–269, 271 Abu Iyad al-Tunisi, 233, 241, 262–263, 266, 292, 299, 306; Shekau, 240 Abu Ja‘afar, 194, 200, 214, 217–218 Abu Khalid al-Sayyaf, 155 Abu Khubab al-Nayjiri, 158, 160, 171, 194, 257; Ghana, 159 Abu Malek Shayba al-Hamad, 240–242, 248, 265, 281, 290, 296, 305; Shekau, 218, 249, 256, 260–262, 282–283; Syria, 266 Abu Mansur al-Amriki, 156, 215–216, 235 Abu Mansur al-Fulani al-Adamawi, 235 Abu Muhammed al-Adnani, 214, 241, 262, 272, 289 Abu Muhammed al-Bauchi, 106, 114, 187– 188, 191, 195, 232, 268; Ansaru, 89, 179, 192, 231, 277; AQIM training, 143, 148, 151, 176, 178, 184; death, 185, 194, 205; Muhammed Yusuf, 109, 116, 136–137, 139 Abu Muhammed al-Yemeni, 48, 53–54, 56, 59, 102, 110, 152, 155; death, 50 Abu Mujahid, 125, 278 Abu Musab al-Barnawi (Habib Yusuf), 72, 111, 139–140, 169, 188, 246–247, 286; Ansaru, 231–232, 257–258, 274, 318 n. 399; Boko Haram, 242–243, 268, 306;

401

402 Index Boko Haram media team, 124, 218, 248– 249, 270, 281, 290, 305; caliphate, 302– 303; dethroned, 296, 301; ideology, 132, 142, 279–281; Islamic State, 272–273, 279; ISWAP, 176, 263–264, 266, 270, 275–276, 308; JNIM, 300–301; Muhammed Yusuf, 3, 65, 83; 97, 99, 112; Shaikh Jaafar, 124; Shekau, 130, 142, 203, 238–239, 246, 256–257 Abu Musab al-Suri, 28 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, 99, 153, 161, 191, 235–236; death, 115, 142, 289; democracy, 131 Abu Muslim al-Ibrahimi, 187, 189, 194, 288, 290; Abu al-Hassan al-Shinqiti, 165 Abu Nasir, 110–111, 191, 202–203, 212, 218 Abu Numan Qutayba al-Shinqiti (Abu Numan), 29–31, 152, 164–165, 188–189, 309 Abu Qaqa, 177–181, 192, 217; Abu Qaqa II, 177, 181, 185, 201, 225 Abu Saad al-Bamawi 179, 188, 238, 243, 264; Ali Monguno, 238 Abu Salma al-Mangawi, 305–307 Abu Sayyaf, 23, 296; Abdurrajak Janjalani, 27 Abu Umar, 38, 82, 89, 106–107; Muhammed Ali, 23, 25–26, 36–37, 81, 87, 98 Abu Usama al-Ansari, 40, 188–189, 191, 195, 200, 214–215, 264 Abu Yahya al-Libi, 96, 153, 155, 161, 175, 230, 239; death, 74, 197; Boko Haram, 158; chain takfir, 98; Muhammed Ali, 24; suicide bombings, 177 Abu Zeid, 110, 164–165, 185–188, 191, 199, 202, 205, 285; background, 26; Belmokhtar, 109, 160; Boko Haram training, 148, 150–152; kidnapping, 29– 30; payment of €200,000, 154, 159–160, 174–175, 178–177; Tariq ibn Ziyad brigade, 109 Abu Zinnira, 225, 240, 259–260, 283–285; CJTF, 226; death, 280; deputy, 284 Abubakar al-Baghdadi, 17, 142, 161, 164, 214, 291, 310, 324; caliphate declaration, 8, 71, 218, 235, 255, 304; death, 270, 304; Mamman Nur, 293; baya/loyalty, 3, 9, 211, 247, 262, 294, 305 Abubakar al-Shinqiti, 165; Nigerian deputy, 163 Abubakar Gumi, 69, 71, 99–100, 108, 128, 260; background, 33, 67; ideology, 73, 115, 162, 214, 246, 320; reconciliation with Sufis, 76–78, 81, 83; Saudi support, 75 Abubakar Mainok, 275, 300, 306–307, 309; Senegalese fighters, 276 Abubakar Mujahid, 86, 100, 142

Abubakar Rimi, 67–69 Abubakar Shekau; Abraham Lincoln, 229, 239; Abu Maryam, 125, 278; Abu Muhammed Abdulaziz, 233; Abu Musab al-Barnawi, 12, 143, 203, 238; agency, 331; Ansaru, 16, 189, 192, 194–195, 216; Ansaru reconciliation, 204–205, 211, 213, 217; AQIM, 149–151, 153, 156, 161, 163– 165, 196; Babs Fafunwa, 287; background, 130; Bakura alliance, 309–310; Ban Ki Mun, 284, Bulama Bukarti, 287; declaring Islamic state, 131, 220; François Hollande, 228, 240, 244–245, 256; John Kerry, 284; nasheeds, 161–162, 173, 228, 235; retaliations and threats, 130, 161, 173, 176, 179, 189, 227–228; takfir, 98, 165, 187– 188; wives, 225; views on Iraq, 130, 131; views on Nigeria, 151, 164, 184; views on West, 113, 116, 130–131, 164, 174, 184; Vladimir Putin, 240 Abubakar Kambar, 125, 138–139, 152, 159, 174, 176, 192, 231; background, 89; Boko Haram intermediary, 148; death, 195, 205; GSPC, 109; Khalid al-Barnawi, 106; Muhammed Yusuf, 117; New Year’s Eve bombing, 171–172; Shekau, 183; trial, 123 Abuja, 100, 103, 178, 195–196, 217, 267; arrests and attacks, 138, 170–173, 175, 177, 186, 201, 235; background, 4, 233; Miss World, 34; new capital, 57, 108; prison break, 195–196, 201, 257; threats and travel warning, 117, 183 Action Against Hunger, 302 Adam Bitri, 309–310 Adamu Dibal, 88, 108, 111–112, 140, 220 Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, 199, 224, 295, 297–299 Advanced Institute for Islamic Studies and Research (ISERI), 187 Africa Media, 241, 249, 256, 259, 261, 296; Boko Haram logo, 281–283 Afghanistan; 60, 86, 105, 215–216, 243, 304; Faruq training camp, 243–244, 266; June 2001 Sahel mission, 48–49; Nigerian links, 55, 62–63, 78, 84–86, 104, 109– 110, 117 Agence France-Presse, 105, 125, 174, 184, 217, 230, 232, 256; see also Aminu Abubakar Ahlussunnah, 34–37, 77–83, 85–88, 90, 102– 106, 193, 320–322; Ghana, 100 Ahmad Abousamra, 241, 266 Ahmad Gumi, 74, 141, 183, 191–192, 202– 203, 278; assassination attempt, 182; conspiracy theories, 183; Mali, 200; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 200

Index Ahmadiyyas, 69, 75 Ahmadu Bello,32–33, 71, 76, 320 Ahmed Godane, 148, 152–153, 156, 161, 173, 215 Ahmed Mahamat Haggar, 126 Ahmed Salkida, 87, 113, 116, 135, 137, 139, 142; mediator, 191, 234, 284, 302–304 airstrikes, 267–268, 271–272, 274, 284, 295,330; drones, 48, 61, 74, 197, 266, 285, 293 Akhwat Akwop, 180–181, 183, 193–194, 217 al-Andalus, 163–164, 185, 188, 198, 212; Abu Abdullah Ahmed, 186, 203, 232–233; Abu Muhjin al-Nayjiri, 156; background, 150; Boko Haram statement, 155; “Join the Caravan”, 116, 155; languages, 156, 197 al-Battar Media Foundation, 240, 261, 265, 273; infiltration, 266 al-Bayan (radio), 262, 275 al-Fallujah, 158–159, 169; Abu Dujanah alTunisi, 158 Algeria; 6, 10–11, 117, 158, 223–224, 310; amnesties, 41, 47, 82; AQIM, 55, 109, 132, 151, 154, 223; GIA formation, 20– 21, 29; GSPC, 21, 32, 38, 40–42, 48; In Amenas attack, 204–205; training camps, 20, 109–110, 155; weapons trafficking: 137–138 Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), 20–21, 24–25, 28, 36, 47, 69, 77; Bin Laden, 48– 49, 98; Nigeria 29, 31, 33, 38–39, 42, 48, 82; takfir, 96, 98, 106, 151, 187–188 Alhaji Abdalla (Abdalla Adamou), 219–221, 230–231 Alhaji Baba Fugu Mohammed, 66, 67, 99, 127, 140, 220 Alhaji Buji Foi, 112, 118, 140 Ali Midan al-Gamborawi, 244–245, 247–248, 306 Ali Modu Sheriff, 88–89, 112–113, 127, 132– 135, 140, 219; Usman al-Zawahiri, 90, 234 Alice Ngaddah, see women Al Jazeera, 42, 136, 149, 156–157, 198, 215, 268; Bin Laden 02/2003 statement, 56, 61 almajiri, 42, 75, 87, 130, 181 al-Muntada al-Islami (Islamic Forum), 28–29, 52–54, 87, 96, 101, 125–126; Alhaji Haruna Sharu, 52–54, 96, 126; Muhyideen Abdullahi, 52–53 al-Muntada mosque, 29, 53–54, 78, 102, 106, 123 al-Murabitun, 217, 295–298, 328; see also Katibat al-Mulathimin al-Naba, 272, 275, 277, 292, 295, 297, 301– 302, 304 Al-Qaeda; Al-Qaeda Central, 9, 11, 21–23, 37, 48, 109–110, 151; Al-Qaeda-IS

403

rivalry, 8, 216, 249; al-Sahab, 158; envoys, 15, 42–43, 48, 321; founding, 79; funding, 27–28, 51–53, 103, 107, 126; Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), 270; Islamic State, 261; Jabhat al-Nusra rivalry, 214, 216, 241, 263, 309; Jamaat Nusrat alIslam wal-Muslim (JNIM), 297–301, 309, 326–327; training camps in Afghanistan, 26, 79, 105, 244, 266; transnationalization, 21, 42, 50, 80; Sudan, 19–20, 24, 37, 107, 109–110 Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), 23, 60, 152, 157–158, 190, 214, 255; attacks in Saudi Arabia, 102; Harith alNazari, 262, 266; internationalist preferences, 25 Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM); al-Andalus media agency, 150; al-Ansar brigade, 159–160, 190; al-Furqan brigade, 165, 187; Al-Shabaab, 147–148, 151–154; Ansar al-Din, 224; Ansaru, 189, 261; Boko Haram financial support, 149, 155, 323; Boko Haram relations, 152, 156, 162–165, 174, 176, 203, 323; external financial support, 31; GIA/GSPC antecedents, 21, 29, 41, 55; GSPC name change, 55, 117, 151; internal unity, 109– 110; IS, 261; Michael Germaneau, 159– 160, 185; Nigerians in, 110–111, 151; rear bases, 21, 28, 30; Sahara region, 187, 212, 224, 261, 298; suicide bombing reduction 177; training, 124–125, 139, 149–152, 155, 173; weapons, 138, 323 Al-Qaeda operatives; Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, 56; Abd al-Rahman al-Nashiri, 49; Abu Ali al-Harithi, 48–49, 51; Abu Faraj alLibi, 56; Abu Khabab al-Masri, 54; Abu Ubaydah al-Banjshiri, 30; Abu Zubaydah, 54; Adam Gadahn, 54; Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, 54; Fadil Harun, 129, 215, 244; Hassan Ghul, 56, 62; Matthew Stewart, 63 n. 59; Khalid Shaikh Muhammed (KSM), 56–57, 255; Muhammed Atef (Abu Hafs al-Masri), 20; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, 49, 54; Usaid al-Yemeni, 56; Yusuf al-Ayeri, 30, 49 Al-Risalah, 51, 53, 97, 105, 109, 191, 195, 264; background, 40; Shekau, 188–189 Al-Shabaab, 23, 54, 60, 79, 129, 136, 161, 256; al-Itihaad al-Islami (Islamic Union), 54; Boko Haram support and training, 147, 232, 323; Ibrahim al-Afghani, 215– 216, 244; Islamic State, 262–263, 273; Mamman Nur, 147, 220; Mokhtar Robow, 161, 164, 216, 293; Nigerian links, 148, 152–154, 157–158, 169–170, 173, 176– 177, 182

404 Index al-Urwa al-Wutqha, 249, 256–262, 266, 275, 277, 281–283, 305, 310 Amaq, 301, 303–305, 307 Amari Saifi (Abdurrazak al-Para), 30, 37, 49, 57, 148; arrest, 40 Aminu Abubakar, 108, 162, 174, 300 Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche, 235 Aminu Tashen-Ilmi, 98, 108, 143, 162, 300; Qatar, 220 Aminu Wali, 32, 52 Aminudeen Abubakar, 77–78, 102, 118 Ana al-Muslim, 157, 198 Ansar al-Mujahideen, 142, 161, 197–198, 200, 215, 218, 232 Ansar al-Sharia, 215, 240–241, 253 n. 207, 271, 281 Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, 191, 198 Ansaru (Jamaat Ansarul Musilimina Fi Biladis Sudan); Abu Ali al-Nayjiri, 199– 200, 203, 224–225, 309; Abu Fudhail alNayjiri, 203; Abu Suyuti, 271; Abu Tawhid al-Nayjiri, 203; background, 3, 6, 14–17, 40, 159, 179, 189, 191; Boko Haram relations, 195–196, 198–204, 217, 259, 264; Desert Herald, 191, 193–194; ideology, 194, 231–232, 236, 249, 271, 324; ISWAP, 269; jihadist lineage, 190; Rocket.Chat, 270; SSS, 180 Anton Zouabri, 187–188 Anwar al-Awlaki, 14, 142, 159, 171, 201, 269; blog, 142, 171, 213; Kogi Salafis, 135, 201–202; Lawal Babafemi, 25; Samir Khan, 25; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 118, 202 Arab League, 79 Arabic (language), 2, 66, 158, 161, 196–197, 225, 262; Hassaniya, 156–157; Kanuri speech/sermon, 229, 276, 293; Shekau, 131, 196–197, 262, 307 Attiyatullah al-Libi (Attiya), 20–21, 26, 49, 96, 98, 119, 152–154, 175, 232 Ayman al-Zawahiri, 23–24, 28, 56, 132, 161, 188, 230; Abu Iyad al-Tunisi letter, 240– 241, 263, 266, 292, 306; intermediaries, 110, 117, 147, 151–154; IS relations, 28, 214, 216, 262, 265, 296; JNIM, 298; Shaikh Jaafar, 99; Sudanese military officer, 147–148

Ba Gomna, 220–221, 278 Ba Idrisa, 277, 288, 301, 306, 308–309, 318 n. 399 Babagana Assalafi, 174, 204–205, 278 Baga attacks, 216, 225, 227, 230, 256–258, 283, 294–295, 301 Bana Banki, 133, 213, 219–220, 278 Bana Fanaye, 222, 267

banditry, 135, 270, 275, 326–327; zarquina, 213 Bashir Aliyu Umar, 72–73, 75, 78, 81, 100, 182; Ayatollah Khomeini, 70 Bauchi prison break, 163, 169–170, 175–176, 178 beheadings, 73, 201, 228, 244–245, 298–299, 301–303, 309; Ansaru, 194; Belmokhtar, 109; CJTF and military, 246; Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg, 255; Ethiopian Christians, 264 blogs, 142, 171, 180, 213 Boko Haram; Al-Qaeda, 151, 155; Ansaru, 40, 110, 180, 193–195, 200, 211, 258– 259; AQIM, 111, 147, 150, 161, 163–165, 195, 203; background, 1–3, 6, 8, 36, 47, 83, 90; CJTF, 226–227, 242; financial support, 25, 28–29, 50–54, 57–58, 126, 219, 230, 246; General Command, 260, 281; GSPC, 37, 39–41, 55, 106; IS, 6, 11, 237–238, 241, 249, 255, 262; ISWAP, 6, 242, 283, 288–291, 304; Izala, 38, 173, 183, 202, 214, 244–245, 320; Jamaat Ahlussunnah lid-Dawa wal-Jihad, 2–3, 161, 163, 212, 232, 260, 272–275, 279– 281; Kolofata, Cameroon, 230, 258, 264, 288; MUJWA, 190, 225, 269; Nigerian Taliban, 23–26, 37, 40, 52, 57–58, 123, 136; payment for soldiers, 229, 246; training camps/recruitment, 42, 87, 95, 110, 155–156, 196–197, 211–213; training with al-Shabaab; 173; weapons; 97, 123, 137, 221–222, 243, 276 bombings; Amman, 57; bomb-maker(s), bomb-making, 54, 111, 150–151, 236, 269, 277–278, 286; Christmas Eve, 170– 173, 175, 177, 186; explosives training, 60–61, 112; Kano Great Mosque attack, 249, 256, 259; London Tube 2005, 57; Madalla church, 177–178, 181; Madrid train, 57, 61; Mali Radisson Blu, 298; Mombasa hotel, 23, 53; statistics, 175, 182; UN building (Abuja), 1, 174, 183, 204, 278; US embassy attacks, 49, 54–55, 57–58, 61, 101, 129, 240; USS Cole, 23, 49, 152; 137–139, 150 Bonnke, Reinhard, 85, 157; see also Nigerian Christians Borno State; Ali Ndume, 222; Ansaru, 216, 269; Babagana Zulum, 290; background, 4, 6, 11, 135; Boko Haram, 175–176, 181, 218–220, 222–227, 248, 259, 288; government white paper, 67; ISWAP, 274, 276, 289, 294, 328; Izala, 131; JTI, 73; Muhammed Yusuf, 81–82, 88, 108; Operation Flush, 135; Shekau, 131, 204; SSS, 180

Index Bosnia, 22, 96, 158, 271 Breaking the Borders, 248, 262, 332 Buduma (Yedina), 245, 309 Bukar Abba Ibrahim, 89, 107; Abu Muhammed Abdulaziz, 233 Bulama Shuaibu, 101, 105–106, 111, 123, 126 Bulayaga, 245 Burkina Faso, 17, 69, 156, 162, 306, 326– 327; Ansaroul Islam, 299–300

caliphate, 1, 11, 99, 190, 277, 305, 324–327; Islamic State, 25, 218; Kanuri, 192; Sokoto, 19, 279; Usman dan Fodio, 258 Cameroon, 3–4, 81, 107, 132, 169, 205, 221; Ansaru, 230, 323; Boko Haram/ISWAP presence, 219–222, 230–231, 246, 262, 274, 285, 310; Darak attacks, 307–310; French family kidnapping, 212–214; French priest kidnapping, 230; Paul Biya 245, 283; weapons trafficking, 221, 231; zarquina, 213, 309; see also Rann kidnapping Cardiff Muslim Primary School, 171; Sadia Malik, 171 cease-fires, 89, 180, 226, 233–234, 272, 283, 293–294, 328–329 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 10, 27, 67–69, 75, 108, 266 Chad, 3, 50, 57, 90, 123, 221–222; Amari Saifi capture, 40; Al-Muntada al-Islami activities, 126; Buduma fighters, 245, 309; Dangdala barracks raid, 307–309; N’Djamena suicide bombings, 267; medics kidnapped, 310 Chaibou Ladan, 33–34, 42, 81 Chechnya, 22, 129, 143, 161–162, 164, 196, 235 Cheikhou Amadou, 190, 299 Chibok kidnapping, 1, 16. 236, 284–286; Ansaru, 239; enslavement, 239–240, 242, 247, 279; negotiators, 174, 234–235, 278, 284; media coverage, 240, 242; Shuaibu Moni, 285 Christian terrorists, 193 Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), 226–229, 248, 265, 294; abuses, 246–247; beheaded/tortured, 227–228, 242–243, 245, 257, 261, 301 Cote d’Ivoire, 160, 298 crusaders/crusades, 83, 142, 150, 156–157, 214; Jewish-Crusader alliances, 83, 150; Nigeria, 62, 85, 149, 193, 324

Dahiru Bauchi, 75–76, 237 Damatru attack, 104, 179, 181–182, 228, 260 Damboa, 105–107, 242 Danladi Ahmadu, 234

405

Dapchi kidnapping, 291–293, 302, 307, 316 n. 273, 324, 329 Dar al-Kufr, 131, 232, 259 Darul Thaqalayn, 73–74 Datty Assalafiy, 124–125, 243, 278, 308 dawla, 99, 142, 245, 301, 321, 324, 329–330; Bin Laden, 60; Boko Haram/ISWAP, 238, 242, 294, 305, 310, 323–324, 332; Islamic State slogans, 239, 245; Muhammed Yusuf, 113, 142, 242; Shekau, 245, 260, 263; Usman dan Fodio, 239, 260 Dawood Imran, 158 dawras, 75–78, 81; Abdullahi Saleh (Dr. Pakistan), 76 deception, 2, 89, 124, 263, 294 defections, 265–266, 270, 272–273, 279, 284, 286, 309; Abu Qaqa, 217; MUJWA, 223 democracy, 82, 130, 134, 141, 160, 216, 257, 287; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, 131; Ahmad Gumi, 183; Ansaru, 216; Boko Haram, 320–321; GIA, 42; JTI, 74; Ibrahim alZakzaky, 101; Muhammed Yusuf, 2, 99, 113, 115, 128–129, 131–132; Nigerian Salafis, 10, 331; Shaikh Jaafar, 107, 124; Shekau, 116, 248, 273, 280, 282, 287 Derna, 241, 247, 268, 271 Desert Herald, 191, 193–195, 200, 214–215, 217, 234 drones, see airstrikes Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), 28, 90 Egypt, 22 Eid al-Fitr, 162–165, 178, 197, 216, 273–274, 286, 288

Facebook, 14, 16, 159, 171, 180, 274–275, 291 factionalization, 17, 75, 179, 308, 310, 327 Fatah al-Islam, 152, 215 Fathul Majid (Divine Triumph), 31, 245 fatwa, 82, 115, 137, 160, 182, 187; Israeli children, 213; students, 238, 291 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 54–55, 58–59, 171, 182, 268 Filiz Gelowicz, 186; German Taliban Mujahidin, 185 forest, 233, 238, 259, 264, 270, 329; Dajin Rugu forest, 270 Fowler, Robert, see kidnapping France, 8, 21, 212, 216, 256; Areva, 159–160, 199; Charlie Hebdo, 74, 256, 281–283; declaring “war on France”, 190; Operation Barkhane, 204; Operation Serval, 199– 200, 204–205, 213, 217, 221–223, 240, 292; Radio France Internationale, 256 Friends of Charities Association, 125

406 Index Fulan Nasrullah, 203, 220; Abu Hafs alMauritani, 174; Swiss diplomats, 284 Fulani, 81, 104, 183, 225, 234–235, 264, 275, 292; Abu Musab, 296; Amadou Kufa, 298–300; Ansaru, 270–271, 275; HausaFulani, 81, 192, 217, 259; JNIM, 298– 300, 327 Garin Darussalam, 140, 275 Gates, Bill, 158 geopolitics, 15, 48, 69, 72, 108, 257; inseparability, 10, 21, 27, 65, 321 Ghana, 33, 54, 69, 100, 152, 159, 184; Rawlings, Jerry, 69 Global Positioning System devices (GPS), 42 Grace Taku, see women Great Mosque (Kano), 123, 248–249, 256, 259

hadith, 66, 68, 114, 136, 229, 277 hajj (haj), 28, 35, 67, 75–76, 105; pilgrimage, 6, 69, 88, 100, 107, 126, 162 Hamadou Kheiry, 96–97, 190–191, 198, 295– 296, 298; videos, 156, 187, 190, 224 Hamas: 158, 161, 171, 182; Gaza, 160; Jund Ansar Allah, 155, 235 Hamid Algabid, 77 Hamza Rabia, 56–58, 61, 136, 150, 183, 192 Hassan Allane, 48, 53, 55, 57, 138, 193; “alQaeda’s interface in the Sahel”, 50; background, 29–32; Bin Laden, 30, 57, 80; death, 38, 51, 106; “father of all jihadist movements”, 30, 38; Muslim World League, 30, 33; GIA/GSPC, 29–33, 38, 41, 48, 52, 77; weapons for GSPC attacks, 31 Hassan Hattab, 49, 81 Hausa-Fulanis, 180, 192 hijra, 87–88, 97, 99, 140, 259, 294 hisba, 66, 87, 112, 244, 273, 288, 290; IMU, 141; Izala, 42, 46; Kano, 37, 84–85; Isa Ali Pantami, 105 Hisham Abu Akram, 29–31, 36, 38–41, 49– 50, 53, 55; AQIM historical accounts, 29, 41, 188; Osama Bin Laden, 29–31, 48, 152 Hudaibiyyah, 70, 73–74, 91 n. 41 humanitarian concerns, 22, 195, 225, 230, 303, 328–330

Ibn Taymiyya Mosque, 99, 111, 114, 139, 143, 165, 281 Ibrahim Abdulganiyu, 25, 38, 82, 87 Ibrahim al-Zakzaky, 81, 83, 113, 134, 142, 162, 238, 260; background, 70; detainment, 74, 238; Funtua Declaration, 70, 114, 133, 229, 287; ideology, 70–71,

73–74, 77, 181, 320–321; Iran, 323; Shekau, 260, 288; Shiism, 72–73; views on 9/11, 86 Ibrahim Babangida, 32, 35, 75–76, 80, 100, 219; Ahmed Deedat, 85; Louis Farrakhan, 85 Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, 71, 84–85, 89, 96, 108, 182; Isioma Daniel/ThisDay, 34; Kanama Camp, 104; Muammar Qaddafi, 35; 68– 69; presidential candidacy, 35; sharia advocacy, 35, 80; Shekau, 235, 278 Ibrahim Harun (Spinghul), 42, 55–62, 95, 103, 117, 136, 138, 244; arrest and sentencing, 58; background, 37, 54; Bin Laden baya, 56; bilingual, 55; FBI, 54– 55; GSPC, 59 Ibrahim Jalo Jalingo, 78, 102, 106, 172 Ibrahim Khalil, 77–78, 103 Ibrahim Saleh, 75–76, 81, 118, 130 Ibrahim Uquba al-Mujahir, 125, 138–139, 243, 278 Ibrahim Uwais, 267 Idriss Déby, 132, 245, 260, 272 Ijaw secessionists, 77 Innocence of Muslims, 74, 197 Inspire (magazine), 25, 255; Samir Khan, 25 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), 247, 287, 295, 280 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 291, 293, 302–304, 324 International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), 27, 30, 100, 125; Jamal Khalifa, 27 Internet, internet access, 14, 42, 58, 140, 143, 159–160, 255–257; see also blogs; Facebook intra-jihadist, 213, 330 “Investigate” video, 275–276, 279, 306 Iran, 10, 42, 70–77, 81–82, 127, 187, 323; geopolitics, 65, 108, 142, 321; Islamic Revolution 1979, 19, 32, 68, 73, 77, 83 Isa Ali Pantami, 25, 78, 97, 100, 105, 193, 287; Muhammed Yusuf debate, 114–116, 136 Isioma Daniel, 34, 83–85, 132, 177; see ThisDay Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), 20, 28–29, 32, 41–42 Islamic State (IS); Abu Waheeb, 267; background, 1, 3, 8–9, 238, 259, 265, 292; Boko Haram, 157, 248–249, 286; Central Africa Province, 27, 302; condemnation, 188, 262; Dabiq, 247, 254 n. 264, 263; media, 255, 261–262, 266, 274, 301, 307; Saudi spy, 266; Shekau, 239, 245, 261, 263, 276, 280–281 Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS); Abdelhakim al-Sahrawi, 297, 300, 306;

Index Chinagodrar, 297; Inates, 297; Indelimane, 297; ISWAP relationship, 301, 308–309, 326 Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP); Abu Musab al-Barnawi, 176, 218, 242, 276, 277, 279; background, 3, 6, 17, 25, 215, 262; al-Haqaiq, 292; IS relations, 238, 242, 267, 308, 324; media, 266, 274–275, 290, 301; Shekau, 263, 272, 274–279, 288, 310 Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), 23, 161, 214, 256, 261; Nigeria video, 157 Israel, 53, 58, 74, 141, 213; AQIM attack, 96; Benjamin Netanyahu, 100, 228; Israel and US prioritized, 22–23, 28; Muhammadu Buhari, 100; Iyad ag Ghaly, 198, 260, 298–299 Izala, 24, 31–34, 42, 52, 54, 60, 70–73; Abdullahi Bala Lau, 100; Abubakar Gero Argungu, 84; Ahlussunnah, 34, 78; “formidable opposition” to Boko Haram, 38; factions, 76–78, 80, 82; ideology, 60, 66, 68, 70, 191, 273; Kabiru Gombe, 100; Muhammed Yusuf, 101, 111–112, 114, 131; Niger, 33; Shekau, 131, 161; state accommodation, 71, 100, 131–135, 163; Yahaya Jingir, 260

Jabhat al-Nusra, 214, 216, 220, 241, 263, 309 Jaji attack (Kaduna), 196, 201, 205 Jama‘atul Nasril Islam (JNI; Society for Support of Islam), 31–33, 53, 229 Jamaat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad Philippines, 191 Jamaat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, 23 n. 28, 191 Jamaat Tawhid wal-Jihad Fi Filistin, 191, 198, 235 Jamaatul Tajdid al-Islami (JTI), 75, 82, 86, 142, 238, 260; Muhammed Yusuf, 73, 81; state accommodation, 99–100, 181, 320– 322 Jamil Mukulu, 27, 129 Jemaa Islamiya-Indonesia (Islamic Group), 23, 192–193 Jemal Oukacha (Yahya Abu Hammam), 164, 187, 212, 260, 298–299; Ansar al-Din, 224 Jews, 8, 71; Jewish alliances, 59–60, 72, 83, 100, 128, 150 Join the Caravan, see Abdullah Azzam Jonathan, Goodluck, 178, 181, 212, 226, 228, 245; Christian, 180, 183, 197, 240, 244, 260 Jos (Plateau State), 31, 76–77, 86, 132–133, 143; bombings, 182, 235, 237; MuslimChristian relations, 157, 159, 170–171, 177–178, 217, 302, 302 Joulebib (Hacene Ould Khalil), 187, 205

407

Kabiru Sokoto, 112, 133, 178–179, 217 Kaduna State, 32, 34, 66–67, 76–78, 134, 180; Ahlussunnah, 77–78; Ansaru, 190– 194; assassinations, killings, 237; Boko Haram, 123, 143, 233; bombings, 177, 196; Izala, 77–78, 80; kidnapping, 184– 185; Muslim-Christian relations, 177, 180, 217; Patrick Yakowa, 200; Zamani Lekwot, 217 Kafanchan, 34–35, 48, 71, 80, 85, 132, 178; clashes with Christians, 32, 76, 105, 129, 180, 193; mosque 32 Kalakato, 66, 70, 74, 141 Kanama brothers, 3, 97, 99, 134; see also Boko Haram, name origins Kanama Camp, 2, 8, 9, 13–15, 28, 43, 50–54, 57, 60, 62, 70, 87, 233, 330; al-Muntada al-Islami, 53–54, 87; attack, 103–104; fatalities, 104; background, 40, 88, 321; member profiles, 89–90; pre-attack events, 99, 103; post-attack events, 105– 107, 118; retreat to GSPC camps, 26, 37, 39–41, 59; survivors, 39 Kano State; Ahlussunnah, 78; al-Muntada alIslami, 28; Ansaru, 189; Bin Laden, 85, 118; Christians, 73, 85, 182; confrontations and attacks, 138, 179, 181– 182; Egyptian Cultural Center, 75, 77–78; GIA, 82; Great Mosque attack, 256, 259; Kano city population, 43; Bin Laden, 85, 118; Panshekera attack, 124; Shaikh Jaafar 29, 75; 105, 123; Shekau, 178, 197; Taliban connections, 52; trafficking/trade routes, 31; uprising and crackdown (1980), 66 Kanuri; background, 4, 6, 81, 173, 328, 331; “Kanuri caliphate”, 192; Shekau, 217– 218, 225, 229, 243, 269 Kashmir, 129, 161, 164, 196 Katiba Macina, 298–300, 327 Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, 271–272 Katibat al-Mulathamin, 205, 212, 214–215, 233, 256–257, 273; anti-sectarianism, 199, 224–225, 273; AQIM, 148, 198; MUJWA, 197, 200; Nigerians, 156, 164, 295 Katibat Muwaqiun Bidima, 199, 204, 212, 328; foreign fighters, 224 Katibat Uqba Bin Nafi, 223, 240 Katsina; GIA recruitment, 31; kidnapping, 196, 216, 218; population increase, 42; scholars, schools, 32–33, 71, 86–87, 96, 100; Shaikh Jaafar, 75; sharia activists, 83; weapons, 31; Yakubu Yahaya, 71 Kenya; Abdulaziz Rimo, 129; Aboud Rogo, 129; Al-Muntada al-Islami allegation, 53; Kenyan jihadism, 129; US embassy bombing, 28, 54–55, 101

408 Index Khalid al-Barnawi, 19–21, 38, 98, 109–110, 160, 164–165, 174; Ansaru, 264; AQIM, 139, 143, 148–149, 151–152, 159, 176; kidnapping ransom, 184–186, 221; Shekau, 197, 201, 203–205, 211; UN bombing, 174–175 kidnappings; Bama, 225, 239; Bakura’s fighters, 310; Bauchi, 211, 214–215; Benin, 298–299; French family Cameroon, 212–213, 219, 222; Damasak, 302; French priest Cameroon, 230; European tourists (32) 2003, 30, 59; Frenchmen (2) in Niamey, Niger, 148, 156, 164, 197–198, 214, 224; Maiduguri, 302–303; Rann, 289, 291–292, 302; Robert Fowler, 109–110, 154; Spanish aid workers Mauritania, 159, ; Nigeria May 2011, 160; engineers (2) Kebbi, 184–185, 190; German engineer Kano, 185–186, 189, 214; Tindouf (Algeria), 189–190; French engineer Vergnet, 216, 218; northern Cameroon 2014, 230; French tourists (2) May 2019, 297 Kogi State, 17; Ebira, Ebiraland, 135, 178, 201–203, 217, 269; Igala, 202; “masquerade custodians”, 203; Okene, 200–205, 269, 271; Sufi shrines, 135 Kurds, 214–215, 270; Ansar al-Islam, 215, 270 Kuwait, 31, 35, 76–77

Lake Chad subregion, 17, 81, 113, 236, 270, 310, 319, 325–329; background, 4, 6; Boko Haram/ISWAP, 221–222, 226, 238, 296; future, 325–329; non-Nigerians, 114 language, 4, 47, 156, 215, 235, 245, 293, 309; French, 156, 198, 256, 278 see also Arabic Leah Sharibu, see women Lemu, Ahmed and Aisha, 128 Liberia, 28, 61; Charles Taylor, 60, 69; Samuel Doe, 35, 69 Libya, 37, 55, 196–197, 243, 269–273, 294– 295, 328; Abdussalam Enesi Yunusa, 268– 269; Abu Musab al-Barnawi, 267–268; Fezzan, 268, 292, 294; Foday Sankoh, 69; Ibrahim Harun arrest, 55, 58; ISWAP in Derna and Sirte, 268, 271; LibyanNigerian connections, 35, 68; Mokhtar Belmokhtar deep hiding, 205, 296; Muammar Qaddafi, 27–28, 35, 68–69, 299; Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, 37; Sabratha, 271; Saye Zerbo, 69

Maghreb, 29, 190 Mahamat Daud, 272, 278–279

mahdism, 15–16, 68–69, 73, 245; Juhayman al-Utaybi, 68; Maitatsine, 15–16, 68, 101, 229, 245; Muhammed Ahmad, 6, 73, 245 Maiduguri; abductions, 303–305; airbase raid, 226–228, 237; air force pilot, 244; background, 11, 25, 26; CJTF, 226; clashes (1982), 66–67, 73, 141; clashes/attacks, 139–140, 147, 169–172, 175–176, 181–182, 248, 307; election intimidation, 295; jihad, 134–135, 173; Mai Deribe, 80; population increase, 42; rockets at airport, 295; Salafis, 78, 80; Shaikh Ibrahim Gomari, 172; Shekau, 148, 160, 169, 176, 229; Sufis, 80–81 Maiduguri outskirts, 99, 139, 169, 171, 227, 246, 288; Shekau, 130, 143, 229, 280 Maitatsine, 16, 66–70, 72, 141, 233, 245; Izala, 100, 141; movement, 15; 66, 69, 73, 75, 123, 267, 320; Shekau, 16, 228–230; Sufis, 67; uprising 1980, 68; see also Kalakato Mali, 36, 69, 107, 165, 190, 195–200, 223, 227; Abu Muhammed al-Yemeni training, 49; Ansar al-Din/MUJWA, 197–198, 200, 215, 295, 298; Bamako, 48–49, 55, 197, 298; Hassi Sidi raid, 164; Mahmoud Dicko, 299; Shekau-al-Barnawi reconciliation, 200–204, 211, Tablighi Jamaat, 41, 298–299; training, 196 Mallam Baba, 201–202 Mallam Mustapha, 135, 201–202, 271 Mamman Nur, 71, 116, 127, 220, 262, 286, 292, 300; background, 90, 113; ideology, 133–134, 137; purge/retirement, 220, 289, 324, 327; Shekau, 130, 272, 274, 276– 277, 286, 310; Somalia, 147; UN bombing, 174 Mamour Fall, 27 Man Chari, 239, 242, 262, 274, 277, 280, 306; death, 286 Maradona, 57, 158 Markaz Ahlussunnah wal-Jamma (Okene, Kogi), 202, 271 Mauritania, 20, 24, 47, 101, 184, 224, 299; Abu Muhammed al-Yemeni, 50; crackdowns on Islamists, 95–97, 187; GSPC/AQIM, 55, 96, 110; Nigerians, 95, 198; Lemgheity attack, 21; Nouadhibou kidnapping, 159, 184, 219; Sanda Bouamama, 198; training camps, 111, 117; Ummul Qura camp, 96; see bombings, Nouakchott Médecins Sans Frontières, 302; see also International Committee of the Red Cross mercenaries, 227 Message to Fulanis, 275, 283

Index mobile phones, 4, 16, 140, 143, 159–162, 246; attacks on cell towers, 181 Moez Fezzani, 271–272 Mohamed Jallo, 268 Mohammed Adam, 37, 276 Mohammed Nazeef Yunus, 202 Mokhtar Belmokhtar, 16, 21, 47–48, 148, 241; Mohamed Ould Nouini, 298–299 Monguno raids, 134, 222–227, 231, 257–258, 269, 273, 278 Morocco, 21, 49, 56–57, 61 Moustapha Chad, 125, 278 Moustapha Limam Chafi, 160, 184, 219 Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), 193, 217 Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), 197–200, 257, 278, 295, 300; al-Minbar al-‘Ilami al-Jihadi, 198, 241; Abdullah Abdullah, 205; AQIM, 224; Boko Haram/ISWAP, 204, 212, 215, 225, 260, 272, 273; founding, 189–190; jihadist reconciliation, 199; jihadist rule, 189, 194, 197–198, 223–224; sharia, 190; 223 Mozambique, 27, 302 Muawiyah al-Qahtani, 203, 213, 215, 218, 240, 261–262, 265; Said al-Shihri, 214 Mudashiru, 37–38, 105, 123 Muhammad Abu Ali, 308 Muhammad Surur, 28, 54, 96, 102; sururis, 54 Muhammadu Buhari, 99, 233, 237, 272, 284– 285, 295, 303; background, 100, 267; Shekau, 260, 272–274, 286 Muhammed Ali; Abu al-Bara al-Dourawi, 51; al-Qaeda, 61; assassination, 26, 40–41, 105–106; background, 22–26, 107; Bin Laden, 26–28, 84, 86; chain takfir, 98–99, 101; fiqh al-jihad, 24; funding sources, 51–54, 60, 79, 103, 126; GSPC, 38; Muhammed Yusuf, 81–83, 108–109, 113; Nigerian jihadism, 36–37, 40, 50, 87, 95, 97–98 Muhammed Ashafa, 42, 60–62, 95, 105, 117– 118, 136; background, 37–38; courier, 37, 58–59; training camps, 37, 55, 57, 123 Muhammed Auwal al-Albani, see Shaikh Albani Muhammed Auwal Ibrahim Gombe (Abu Usama al-Ansari), 40, 214, 217, 237, 258, 264; Ansaru, 116, 191, 193, 199–200, 215, 218, 220; assassination, 129, 194–195; background, 136; Boko Haram, 193; ideology, 193–194, 203, 232; Isa Ali Pantami, 129, 136, 192; Shekau, 194 Muhammed Auwal Nuhu, 116, 172 Muhammed Bello Ilyas Damagun, 95–97, 107, 111, 117–118, 134

409

Muhammed bin Salman, 191 Muhammed Marwa, 66, 233–234, 237 Muhammed Marwana, 233–34, 237 Muhammed Naeem Noor Khan (Abu Talha al-Pakistani), 57 Muhammed Nazifi Inuwa, 95, 101 Muhammed Ndimi, 80, 100, 118 Muhammed Sani Rijiyar Lemo, 28, 106, 135 Muhammed Turi, 238 Muhammed Yusuf; Ahlussunnah, 34, 36, 80– 81; Al-Qaeda, 62; al-Shabaab al-Salafiya, 81–82; background, 10; Bin Laden, 86; Boko Haram, 29, 87–88, 108–109; capture and killing, 139–140, 143; chain takfir, 98; funding, 26, 53, 97, 107; ideology, 2, 71–72, 108, 114–115, 132, 261, 322; JTI, 73; Mama Boko Haram, 137; Muhammed Ali, 29; Open Letter sermon, 134–135, 161; SCSN, 34; Shaikh Jaafar, 81, 124– 126 139; Shia and Salafi organizations, 65, 70; youth, 65–67; Yusufiya, 2–3, 115 mujaddid, 68, 71–73, 101 Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, 37, 69, 118; Stephen Davis, 234 mujahidin, 109, 137, 139, 150, 159, 185, 199; Allane, 29–31; Al-Qaeda, 185, 241; background, 2–3, 20; Bin Laden, 35, 108, 152; Boko Haram, 230, 238, 243, 261– 262; GSPC, 49; Somalia, 273; Shekau, 188, 196; women, 267 Mullah Umar (Afghan Taliban), 23, 86, 104, 116, 162, 164, 190, 298 Mundu (Bauchi State), 259, 289 murtad(un), 8, 72, 105 Musa Cerantonio, 242 Muslim Brotherhood, 28, 32, 39, 41, 71, 77, 96; coalition building, 22; criticized, 41, 132; Jamaatul Tajdid al-Islami (JTI), 73, 322; suppression, 22, 72; Hassan alTurabi, 24 Muslim-Christian relations, 38, 48, 60; Al Jazeera, 157; clashes, 32, 34–36, 86, 129, 178, 197, 202; conversions, 72, 132, 183, 181, 284; tensions, 67, 118, 183; ultimatum, 180–181; violence, 8, 170, 193; Yelwa-Shendam, 104–105, 193, 196 Muslim Students Society (MSS), 32, 67, 77, 85–86, 287 Muslim World League (MWL), 22, 27, 30– 31, 33, 39, 42, 76, 125 Mustapha Kirmimma, 306, 308, 318 n. 399 Muzzamil Sani Hanga, 73, 75, 83 N’Djamena, 69, 220; Bana Fanaye, 222, 267 Nabil Sahraoui, 59–60, 151 Nafiu Baba-Ahmed, 35, 100, 118, 141, 193

410 Index Nasir al-Wuhayshi, 190, 216, 241, 244 Nasiru Kabara, 54, 75, 76, 78 near enemy, far enemy, 22–23, 62, 149, 218, 327 Niger; Arlit and Agadez bombings, 199; Bakura, 309–310; Blabrine barracks raid, 307, 309; Bosso and Diffa raids, 276, 294; Hassan Allane charity work, 30; Muhammed Yusuf’s center in Diffa, 114, 149; Niamey kidnappings, 148, 156, 164, 197–198, 214, 224; Robert Fowler kidnapping, 109–110, 154 Nigeria; background, 4, 6; Constitution, 34, 70–72, 83, 99, 128, 131, 161–162, 194, 256; counter-terrorism, 118–119; courts and legislation, 37, 118, 170, 179; ethnic groups, 4, 192; “Giant of Africa”, 6, 69; independence (1960), 19, 66; “jihad awakening”, 58–59; Kanem-Bornu empire, 6, 81, 132; Maiduguri clashes 1982, 66–67, 73, 90; Nigerian Council of Ulama, 85, 113; population, 42; religion background, 19–21; Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria (SCSN), 34–35, 88, 100, 118 ; US foreign policy, 61, 77, 108, 118, 126, 147, 268 Nigerian Christians, 86, 125, 158, 183, 303– 304; Black Crusaders, 82; Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), 85, 128, 133, 161, 189, 193, 217, 302–304 Nigerian diaspora, 4, 15, 36–37, 39, 61–62 Nigerian police, 131–132, 137, 139, 163, 169–170, 237, 303; police officers killed, 103–104, 107, 123–124, 172, 186, 189, 220, 244–246, 264 Nigerian Salafis, 9–11, 36, 48, 102–103, 113, 172; financial support from, 39; mainstream Salafism, 60, 84, 88, 97, 99, 105; Salafi-jihadi ideology, 8, 48, 65, 86, 103, 192–193; democracy, elections, 100, 115–116; Saudi contacts, 129, 102, 172 9/11; “Battle of Manhattan”, 83; Bin Laden Nigeria statement, 56; Kanama camp, 50; post–9/11 reactions, 84–86; Nigerian reactions, 9–11, 23, 42, 50, 84, 255, 310 Nouakchott, 95–96, 157, 164, 184

Obama, Barack; 171, 239–240, 244; Michelle, 240; threats, 174, 197, 228, 240, 245, 274 Olusegun Obasanjo, 32, 82, 220 Omar al-Sahrawi, 159, 219 Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), 21–22, 33, 77, 79, 82, 100; Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), 43 n. 17 Osama Bin Laden; Abbottabad, 10, 30, 56, 153; Al-Qaeda, 79; Al-Qaeda Central, 21,

153; Angur Ada, 54–56; GIA, 20, 49; “Ford Foundation of Sunni Islamic Terrorism”, 27; funding, 24–27, 39, 79; global jihadism, 22–23; 35; GSPC, 21, 48–49; Hassan al-Turabi, 24, 73; ideology and policy, 60–61, 98; interest in West Africa, 28, 30–31; Khartoum, 19–20; panIslamism, 22; pledging baya, 20, 56; Nigeria, 56–57, 83–86, 110, 152, 154; Wael Julaidan, 27 Oumar Hamaha, 47, 109, 157, 190, 213, 299; background, 31, 198, 224; death, 205, 215

Pakistan, 9–10, 20, 55, 57–58, 61, 76, 197; Muslim World League, 27, 31, 33; Peshawar, 20, 22, 25, 27, 76; Shkai village (Pakistan), 56, 62; training, 57–58, 61 Palestine, 24, 129, 133, 157, 191, 196 pan-Islamism, pan-Islamists, 15, 21–22, 33, 101–102, 129; Nigeria, 9, 36, 42, 78, 85, 102, 320 Panshekera attack, 124–125, 139 Philippines, 23, 27, 211, 191, 266, 296; see also Jamaat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad Philippines propaganda, 9, 140, 177, 199, 204, 215, 290, 304; Mektab al-Ghuraba, 274–275; videos, 179, 190; Guantanamo-style jumpsuits, 158, 255, 262, 264, 266, 301– 305, 308, 324 Prophet Muhammad, 27, 113, 128, 139, 187, 243, 245; birthday (mawlid), 72, 288; blasphemed, 32, 34, 74, 117, 132, 161, 197

Quran, 2, 67–69, 73, 97, 114–115, 161, 223; Maitatsine, 67, 69; Shekau, 131, 164, 229, 287; Muhammed Yusuf, 68, 128; see also hadith Qurrat Uyun al-Muwahhidin, 214–215, 218, 240

Rabiu Afghani, 37, 105 n. 84 Ramadan, 163, 180, 182, 194, 195, 237, 297; Ahmad Gumi, 183, 192; al-Muntada alIslami, 28–29; Shaikh Jaafar, 24, 81–82 Ramat Moussa, 221 Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), 213, 221 Rasulul A‘azam Foundation, 74, 81 Riyadh, 30, 33, 57, 95, 102, 264; AQAP attacks, 49 Rumsfeld, Donald, 55, 58

Salafi-jihadi scholars; Abderrahmane Abou Ishak Essoufi, 189, 204; Abu Basir alTartusi, 25, 26, 98; Abu al-Hassan Rasheed al-Bulaydi, 188, 190, 204, 232,

Index 262; Abu Malek al-Tamimi (Anas alNashwan), 264, 279, 281–282, 303; Abu Muhammed al-Maqdisi, 14, 24, 160, 174, 235, 241; Abu Mundhir al-Shinqiti, 174, 203, 238, 241, 253 n. 207, 265; Abu Qatada al-Filistini, 153, 241; see also Saudi Salafi scholars Salafi-jihadism, 23, 38–43, 71, 96, 160, 310 Salafism; 41, 75, 141, 245, 298; relations with Sufism, 76, 85 Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), 20–21, 62; Al-Qaeda, 55; Boko Haram, 48, 58–59, 90, 106, 322; clashes, 38; funding and support, 29, 32, 51–54, 103, 126; GIA, 49; Hassan Hattab, 49, 81; Lemgheity attack, 21, 109; Nigeria, 47; Nigerian Taliban, 40, 57, 60, 89; recruits, 36, 42, 48, 50, 57; training camps and bases, 21, 25–26, 37, 41, 49–50, 95, 117 Salisu Wudil, 112, 114, 127, 133, 136, 189, 244; Shaikh Jaafar assassination, 138–139 Sanam al-Islam, 215–218, 224, 249; alMinbar al-‘Ilami al-Jihadi, 241 Sani Abacha, 32, 219 Sanni Umar, 142 Sanusi Iguda, 287 Sanusi Lamido Sansusi, 67, 118, 248; www.gamji.com, 29 Saudi Arabia, 10, 27, 35–37, 39, 51, 65, 172; AQAP, 101–103; foreign policy, 76–78, 102; funding Nigerian Salafis, 4, 33, 53, 75, 77, 103, 107; Hijaz, 22, 30; Jama‛atul Nasril Islam (JNI), 31; King Faisal Prize for Service to Islam, 33, 77, 85, 128; Muhammad Surur, 28; Muhammed Yusuf short-term exile, 99; Nigerian university students, 4, 21, 78, 96; Persian Gulf War, 10, 28, 76, 102; Saudi scholars, 49, 51, 70, 102, 115, 126, 177; US troops, 76, 102; Wahhabism, 21–22, 29, 36, 65, 245 Saudi Salafi scholars; Abd al-Aziz bin Baz, 78, 115; Ali al-Khudair, 48, 102, 187; Hamoud al-Aqla al-Shuebi, 48; Muhammad ibn al-Uthaymeen, 21, 115; Sulaiman al-Alwan, 48, 102, 235; see also Salafi-jihadi scholars Scholarly Heritage Foundation (Muassasat alTurath al-Ilmi), 265, 278–279, 292 Senegal, 156, 220–221, 275–276 Shaikh Muhammed bin Abdullah Ahmed Zarban al-Ghamidi, 75, 77–78, 102–103, 106 Shaikh Albani, 67, 74–75, 82, 95, 117, 141, 260; background, 69, 78; death, 237, 278; Iran, Saudi Arabia reliance, 127; Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani, 90 n.

411

14; Shaikh Jaafar assassination, 139; weapons sources, 137–138 Shaikh Jaafar Mahmud Adam, 26, 38–39, 51, 53, 70, 82, 84; Ahlussunnah, 34, 80; assassination, 67, 69, 123–127, 138–139, 287; background, 24, 75, 77, 79, 81; funding and support, 78, 80; global jihad, 35–36, 80; hisba, 37; Muhammed Ali, 105–106; sharia and ideology, 80, 99, 101, 103, 107, 116; Shekau, 287; Sufis, 80–81, 101; Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria (SCSN), 34; Wahhabism, 29 Shaikh Muhammad al-Hassan Dedew, 96–97, 187, 299 Shaikh Muhammad Gibrima of Nguru, 65, 77 Shaikh Muhammad Salim Wadud, 96 Sharada attack, 123–124 sharia, 37, 48, 67–68, 99–101, 138, 156–157, 240–241; Ahlussunnah, 80; anti-sharia, 83; AQIM, 204; as law 1999–2001, 43; background, 2, 8–10, 15; Boko Haram, 190, 328; Christian opposition, 34, 76, 80, 86; Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, 34–35; fatwa, 160; force of arms, 114; hisba, 66; ISWAP, 294; Katibat al-Mulathamin, 224; MUJWA,190, 223; politicized, 83; promotion/implementation, 82, 85–86, 112, 242–243, 271, 297, 320–321; SCSN, 34, 88, 100; “sharia state”, 41; Shekau, 245, 260, 264; social media, 171, 290; tribunals, 244, 255, 260 Shehu Shagari, 35, 66–67, 69, 141 Shia/Shiism, 8, 15, 39, 70–76, 141, 132, 323; Khomeini, 68, 70–73, 229; Muhammed Yusuf, 65, 72; Shekau, 164, 248, 288; Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), 72, 74, 142, 237 Shumukh al-Islam, 157, 159–160, 241 Slavery, enslavement, see women, Christianity; women, enslavement; women, kidnapping Sokoto, 32, 178–181, 183–186, 195, 204–205, 297; Boko Haram, 138; caliphate, 19, 279 Somalia, 22–23, 27–28, 48, 79, 151, 153, 156, 273; training, 147–148, 171, 173, 176, 182 South Africa, 85, 266 Soviet Union, 19–20, 108, 141 State Security Service (SSS), 52–53, 58, 118, 180–181, 202, 275; Abubakar Kambar, 117; Ansaru, 218, 269; Boko Haram, 186; Kanama camp, 103; Muhammed Yusuf, 88, 111, 117, 126, 132, 134; students, youth, 95–96, 201, 269; Yusuf Ahmed, 87 Strait of Gibraltar, 49, 152 Sudan, 6, 11, 22, 105, 109, 111, 132, 268; AlMuntada al-Islami, 52–53, 96–97, 125–

412 Index 126; Bin Laden, 19–20, 30, 152; funding, 26, 96–97, 111; ISWAP media, 271–272, 308; Nigerian university students, 24, 29, 79, 110, 213, 272; Sadiq al-Mahdi, 73; training camps, 19, 24–25, 38, 148, 156, 172–173 Sufism, 19, 21–22, 29, 31–33, 72–73, 75–81; Qadiriyya order, 31–32; Tijaniya order, 29; Somalian Sufis, 54; anti-Sufism, 21, 41, 80–81, 84, 202 Suleiman Gambo, 178, 184 Sultan Ould Bady, 47, 49, 213, 224, 300; MUJWA, 190, 295 Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria (SCSN), 39, 41, 81, 86, 118, 130, 192; Ali Modu Sheriff, 112; background, 34–35; sharia, 82, 85, 88, 99–100

Tablighi Jamaat, 27, 41, 57, 61, 141, 213, 298, 299 taghut, 8, 173, 193 takfir, takfiri, 151, 165, 169, 187–188, 192, 205, 215; Abu Musab al-Barnawi, 231, 265, 279–283, 331; Ansaru opposition, 136, 194, 203, 216–217, 238; chain/excessive takfir, 20, 40, 49, 96–99, 114, 187, 265; Muhammed Ali, 99, 101, 104–105, 108, 131; on Sufis, 67, 75–76, 78, 118, 135, 201–202, 248 Taliban (Afghan), 37, 51, 79, 104, 108, 152, 321, 328; Ansaru, 194; inspiration/loyalty, 2, 23, 26, 58, 80, 83, 90; IS Khorasan, 304; Isa Ali Pantami, 105, 115–116; JNIM, 298; Michelle Obama, 240; Muhammed Yusuf, 132, 322; negotiation, 328; post–9/11 support, 84–87; sharia, 243; tactics, 182; see also Boko Haram, Nigerian Taliban Tamim al-Adnani, 20, 27 tamkin, 60, 238, 242–243, 266, 292, 328 Tariq ibn Ziyad brigade, 29, 109, 150, 187 Tawhid, 8, 99, 156, 189–190; Brigades of, 142–143, 171 Telegram, 265, 270–271, 284, 288–289; Shekau, 188, 262, 292, 307 ThisDay, 34, 83–85, 132, 161, 173, 185; suicide car bombing, 175, 177 Tijjani Kafa, 39 trafficking, 21, 38, 42, 159, 190, 213; cigarettes, 31; Sultan Ould Bady, 31, 47, 49, 190, 224; support for Boko Haram, 231; vehicles 219–220; weapons, 31, 37, 164, 221–222, 230 tramadol, 244, 246 tri-border region, 17, 295–297, 300, 326 Tukur Mamu, 191–192, 194, 199–200, 212

Tunisia, 74, 158, 212, 223, 233, 240–241, 271 Twitter, 213, 266; al-Urwa al-Wutqha, 249, 256–257, 259–262, 281; Ansaru, 249, 257, 259; #BringBackOurGirls, 240; Boko Haram, 249, 256, 261, 305; court case, 171; ISWAP, 266; media activists, 218, 255; Shekau, 228, 260–262, 282

Umar Fallata, 77–78 Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 118, 171, 200, 202; Ahmad Gumi, 200 Umar Tell, 190, 216, 223 Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua, 80 Ummul Qura (Mauritania), 96, 187 UNICEF, 291, 302–303 United States of America (USA); Defense Intelligence Agency, 50; far enemy, 22– 23; Dan Mozena, 79, 240; Iraq and Afghanistan impact, 328; Iran, 65; Nigeria operations, 107–108; Saudi Arabia, 76; US-Nigeria relations, 6, 61, 118; see also US embassy attacks universities (colleges, schools); Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, 171, 234; Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), 32, 35, 70, 76, 82–83, 135, 201; al-Azhar University, 75; Arabic Teachers’ College (Kano), 106; Arabic Teachers’ College (Katsina), 32, 71; Bayero University Kano (BUK), 69–71, 84–85, 87–89, 182, 202, 234, 287; Borno College of Legal and Islamic Studies (BOCOLIS), 130; Federal University of Technology (Minna), 269; Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University, 95, 264; Iman University (Yemen), 266; International Islamic University (Islamabad), 39, 76; International University of Africa (Khartoum), 21, 24, 29,79, 95, 272; Islamic University of Medina (IUM), 21, 24, 36, 70, 75–76, 78, 99, 106, 275; Okene Federal College of Education, 202; Saudi Institute (Nouakchott), 95, 187; University of Khartoum, 161; University of Maiduguri, 23–24, 26, 89, 98, 107, 286, 302, 305 US Africa Command (AFRICOM), 158, 174 Usman dan Fodio, 31, 70, 73, 143, 192, 245, 260–261; Ansaru, 258, 271; background, 19, 81; Boko Haram, 258; Funtua Declaration, 70; JTI, 73; mujaddid, 68; Mamman Nur, 133; MUJWA, 189, 205; Shekau, 239, 190; Sufis, 331 Uzbekistan, 141; Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), 185; Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

Index (IMU), 62, 141, 185; Uighur Chinese (“Turkistani”), 62

vigilantes, 42, 80, 89–90, 105–106, 111, 141, 221, 234 Voice of America (VOA), 233, 243, 287; Saye Zerbo, 69 Wahhabism, 21–22, 28, 31, 36, 65, 114, 245; anti-Wahhabi, 29; Kaduna faction, 76–78 War on Terror, 49, 84, 86, 104, 108 weapons; army, 243, 258; AQIM, 149–150, 155, 165, 323–324; arrests, 231; Boko Haram, 123; CAN, 161; demand for; 21, 138, 149; government crackdown, 137; hiding, stockpiling, 42, 97, 169, 221–222, 233, 243; ISWAP, 290; pre–2000, 31, 39; promise of, 35, 310; stealing, 104, 164, 192, 221, 223, 226, 276; Shekau, 188; training deficit, 137–138; vehicle with, 227, 275, 297, 305; see also trafficking, weapons women (and girls), 195, 226, 246–247, 273, 289, 293, 306; Alice Ngaddah, 291, 302– 304; Cameroonian abuse, 289; Christianity, 17, 239–240, 247–248, 279– 280, 291–292; enslavement, 268, 286, 303, 305; execution, 303–304, 324; Grace Taku, 302–304; Ibrahim Tada Nglayike, 245; Islamic dress code, 99, 112, 115, 128, 188; kidnapping, 171, 226, 284–286, 298, 302–303, 306–307, 309–310, 329; Leah Sharibu, 291–292, 302–304; Nigerian women, 66, 110, 137; sharia, 243; suicide bombers, 222, 235–237, 248, 267, 280, 285–286, 289; Yazidi women, 247, 304; see also Chibok; Dapchi World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), 30, 85, 125–126

Yahaya Farouk Chedi, 85 Yahya Djouadi (Abu Ammar), 155–156, 165, 187 Yakubu Musa Hassan Katsina (Yakubu Musa Kafanchan), 54, 66, 81, 85, 88–89, 96, 100, 141–142; Ahlussunnah, 34; arrest, 52; background, 31–32; funding for schools, 33; GSPC, 51; Ibrahim

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Mushaddadu, 31; ideology, 80, 83–84; Islamic charities, 33, 76–77; Kaduna faction, 80; Moufidah, 33; Izala, 31; panIslamism, 42; political aims, 32, 77; Riyadhul Qur’an, 33, 100; SCSN, 34; students, 42; Salafi controversy, 116 Yakubu Yahaya, 71, 74, 99 Yelwa-Shendam clashes, 104–105, 134, 193, 196 Yemen, 22, 25, 48, 54, 56, 61, 183, 266; Shekau, 164, 196, 262 Yobe State, 13, 53, 66, 82, 192, 283, 322; background, 2, 4, 9–10; confrontations, attacks, 138, 175–176, 180–181, 228, 242, 274, 276; Hudu Muhammed, 88, 99–100; ISWAP, 289–291, 294, 309; jihadist base, 26, 38, 50, 53, 87–90, 97; mainstream Salafis, 100–101; Potiskum, 182, 271; student massacres, 227, 238, 263–265; territorial control, 243–244, 248; Yobe Islamic Center, 99–100 Yoruba Muslims, 25, 32, 85, 89, 104, 202– 203, 205; Moshood Abiola, 219 youth, 54, 84–87, 117–118, 171, 226, 238, 256; child soldiers, 17, 97, 257, 280, 288, 295, 305, 331; recruitment and training, 42, 57–58, 95–96, 104, 117, 152, 229; youth groups, 73, 79, 81, 85, 130 YouTube, 14, 74, 202, 259, 279–281, 283– 284; censorship, 242, 255; Islam Daula, 259–260; Muhammed Yusuf’s death, 140; public retaliations/threats, 179, 212, 242; Shekau, 177, 179, 183, 196, 232, 240, 256 Yunus al-Mauritani, 98, 110, 152, 154, 174– 175, 185–186; arrest, 55 Yusuf Ahmed (Abu Dujana), 37–38, 42, 55, 61, 87, 89; death, 38; funding, 50–54; training camps, 38, 41, 57–58, 95 Yusuf Islamic Brothers, 180, 194, 200, 234

Zango-Kataf, 34–35, 105,129, 193, 217 Zaji-Biriri village, 50, 87–88, 90, 97–99, 101, 103 zakat, 112, 188 Zamfara, 34, 82, 112, 205, 264 Zanna Mustapha, 174, 219, 234, 284–285, 304 Zoroastrian (Magi), 164

About the Book

The kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok, Nigeria, in 2014 drew the world's attention to the previously little-known extremist group Boko Haram. Numerous questions followed, among them: Where did Boko Haram come from? What explains the rise of this militant Islamic group and its increasingly violent actions? What is its relationship to the Islamic State? Jacob Zenn addresses these questions in his detailed chronicle of the foundation of Boko Haram, its strategy and tactics, and its evolution as a global Jihadist movement. Drawing on exclusive interviews and extensive primary sources in Arabic and Hausa, Zenn reveals the group’s inner workings and the dynamics of its trajectory.

Jacob Zenn is senior fellow on African Affairs at The Jamestown Foundation and adjunct professor in Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program.

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