Leadership spat reveals rift in Boko Haram

Abubakar Shekau said yesterday he remains the leader of Boko Haram, the Islamic State’s West African affiliate. The announcement follows a Wednesday report in an Islamic State newspaper claiming the Nigerian-based group has a new leader who has vowed to increase attacks on Christians. The conflicting reports highlight the internal division that has long existed within the extremist terror group.

Islamic State (ISIS) newspaper al-Nabaa on Wednesday identified Abu Musab al-Barnawi as the leader of its West African province. In an audio message released yesterday, Shekau disputed the new leadership as “a coup” and accused the new leader of preaching “false creeds.” He said he had sent several letters to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi addressing al-Barnawi’s infidelity but received no response.

“Today, I woke up to see one who is an infidel whom they want me to follow,” Shekau said in a 10-minute audio message broadcast in Hausa and Arabic. “No I won’t. … We cannot subject ourselves to people who are in ignorance of all holy books and teachings.”

Al-Barnawi and several other Boko Haram fighters defected from the group and created the al-Qaeda affiliate Ansaru in 2012. Disagreements about attacking Muslims and involving women and children in battle sparked the rift. In a video released in January, al-Barnawi identified himself as Boko Haram’s spokesman. Analysts described what appeared to be a reintegration of the groups as a move toward reaching a common goal.

In his interview with al-Nabaa, al-Barnawi pledged to bomb churches and kill Christians while ending attacks that target Muslims. He accused Christian charities of seeking to Christianize the region.

Al-Barnawi said the extremist group will respond by “booby-trapping and blowing up every church that we are able to reach, and killing all of those (Christians) who we find from the citizens of the cross.”

Shekau took over Boko Haram leadership in July 2009 after the Nigerian police arrested its founder, Muhammad Yusuf. The radical leader steered the group to carry out more violent attacks. Since then, it has killed more than 20,000 people, including Muslims, and displaced more than 2 million others.

In March 2015, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to Islamic State and renamed itself Islamic State West African Province. But the extremist groups do not appear to have collaborated since then. Martin Ewi, a counterterrorism expert with the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa, described the pledge of allegiance as lip service, noting Shekau hardly adapted the group to suit its new alliance.

“Knowing Shekau’s character, he is someone who measures himself on the same rank as al-Baghdadi, and that can’t happen where you have only one caliph in the caliphate,” Ewi said. “If Shekau is being sidelined, it means al-Baghdadi does not want to go through Shekau’s radical approach.”

Nigeria’s security forces have cracked down on Boko Haram in recent months, ousting it from most of the territory it once claimed. Despite the losses, the group continues sporadic guerrilla-style attacks. Nigeria’s director of defense information, Rabe Abubakar, told the News Agency of Nigeria the group’s leadership spat does not affect the country’s security operations.

“As far as we are concerned, what Boko Haram or their cohorts are doing is of no relevance to our operations against them,” Abubakar said. “We are just focused on clearing he remnants of the insurgents that are scattered around.”