Boko Haram pledges allegiance to ISIS

Kellou Abakar’s contractions began Jan. 3—the same day Boko Haram attacked her hometown in Nigeria. With labor coming on, the 30-year-old took her two little girls and carried her 4-year-old son on her back as they fled Baga. She narrowly escaped one of the worst massacres in Boko Haram’s five-year reign of terror as it works to establish an Islamic caliphate in Africa.

Boko Haram militants have killed a staggering 13,000 people since 2009 in Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon, Niger, and Chad. On Saturday, via Twitter, the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, pledged allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS), the group working to establish a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria. His offer of alliance is not minor: Boko Haram controls an area of northeast Nigeria nearly as big as Belgium.

On Monday, government forces from Chad and Niger crossed the border into northeast Nigeria in a joint military campaign against the terrorists. It’s the latest salvo in a regional attempt to stand up to the group, which has, until now, operated mostly without opposition. While a concerted effort to oust them could put the terrorists on the defensive for the first time, a partnership with ISIS almost certainly will boost morale among the group’s fighters and could help with recruiting.

Fighters from ISIS franchises in North Africa who face trouble migrating to the Middle East may instead move to Boko Haram’s territory, warned J. Peter Pham, director of the Washington-based Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. Over time, the pledge likely will mean a globalizing of the caliphate, he said.

The human cost continues to rise: BH jihadists killed hundreds in Baga, and after two months Abakar still doesn't know whether her husband is among the dead. Three of her other children vanished in the chaos as the militants opened fire on the town and shut people into homes they set on fire.

Abakar took four hours to reach the edge of Lake Chad, where she hoped to find a boat to flee to Chad. But her labor was so advanced she gave birth to her son in Nigeria. Right after he was born, she and all the children got into a boat.

“If I had stayed there, they would have killed me,” she said from inside a tent at a refugee camp, now home to more than 6,000 Nigerians who have fled the violence. She arrived only this week in the camp—run jointly by the United Nations and the Chadian government—after seeking refuge in several other villages.

Another refugee, Mahamat Abakar, last saw his wife and eight children two months ago as they divided up to board two small wooden boats. Upon arriving at a Chadian refugee camp, Abakar, 60, heard one of his sons also made it safely. When he saw him, he sobbed.

“I keep the faith that God has saved the rest of them and I will find them too,” he said.

The 10-year-old boy said when the boat he was on began sinking, the man paddling it ordered him and another child to get out. They clung to tree branches until people in another boat rescued them.

Many in the Chadian refugee camps trust their loved ones are not dead but are still making their way slowly to safety or hiding on the dozens of islands in Lake Chad, which unites Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Niger. Chadian authorities say at least 2,000 people are living precariously on islands in one of the world’s poorest nations, needing transport to a refugee camp.

The Chadian military patrols by helicopter to protect those fleeing, but at 4 a.m. on Feb. 13, the militants used boats to attack Ngouboua, 11 miles inside Chad, slitting the throat of a district official and killing at least seven others. They left burning houses in their wake.

“Many are traumatized and come with only the clothes on their backs,” said Dimouya Souapebe, the chief civil servant in the area. “We are obliged to welcome them, and share with them what we have to eat.”

Besides more than 1 million Nigerians who have been internally displaced, an estimated 100,000 have fled over the borders of Niger, and another 60,000 have made their way to Cameroon, whose territory includes part of Lake Chad. Chad harbors at least 17,000 in a region the UN says is already 32 percent “food insecure.”

In early February, Nigeria and its four Lake Chad neighbors created a Multinational Joint Task Force to try to rout Boko Haram. Chadian forces have now become a major player, already taking back several large towns held by Boko Haram inside Nigeria. It’s no small feat for a country which most recently faced insurgencies of its own in 2006 and 2008.

Pham expects Boko Haram to engage in even more gruesome tactics if it now wins ISIS support.

“The upcoming Nigerian elections and potential post-election upheaval provide too rich of a target environment for the jihadists to pass up,” he said.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan is running for re-election on March 28, and analysts say the ballot is too close to call. Boko Haram has threatened to disrupt the elections, calling democracy a corrupt Western concept.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.