Nigerian terror group Boko Haram pledges allegiance to ISIS Mar. 10, 2015 Nigerian terror group Boko Haram pledges allegi

Nigerian terror group Boko Haram pledges allegiance to ISIS

Mar. 10, 2015

Nigerian terror group Boko Haram pledges allegiance to ISIS

The recording appeared to be authentic. Jacob Zenn, an expert on the terror group said that while other

اقتباس :

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online): In the audio, Abubakar Shekau of Boko Haram announced its "allegiance to the Caliph of the Muslims, Ibrahim ibn Awad ibn Ibrahim al-Husseini al-Qurashi," which is another name for ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The recording appeared to be authentic. Jacob Zenn, an expert on the terror group said that while other messages have been faked, the speaker in this one is Shekau.

اقتباس :: Whether or not the deeply racist Islamist State will reciprocate Boko Haram's allegiance remains to be seen.

"Boko Haram joining the ISIS fold makes sense to both groups," he said from Abuja, Nigeria. "Boko Haram will get legitimacy, which will help its recruiting, funding and logistics as it expands into (French-speaking) West Africa. It will also get guidance from ISIS in media warfare and propaganda. Previously Boko Haram was a sort of outcast in the global Jihadi community. Now it is perhaps ISIS' biggest affiliate.

"ISIS gets more international legitimacy as a global caliphate."

The allegiance will be official when an ISIS leader such as Representative Abu Mohammed al Adnani issues a statement, according to Zenn.

Boko Haram has two main factions. One is led by Shekau; the other faction is comprised of former members of Ansaru, a Boko Haram offshoot. Ansaru had been operating from around 2012 as the Nigerian wing of AQIM, or al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. After the French-led intervention in Mali in 2013, a significant number of Ansaru members re-integrated with Shekau.

The prerequisite for Boko Haram joining ISIS coalition was a coming together of the two factions.

ISIS connected with former Ansaru fighters within Boko Haram and pressed them to unify the group's ranks. The result was the formation of a unity general command between the two factions.

That involved bridging of some ideological differences between the al Qaeda-like Ansaru and the ultra-extreme "takfiri"-like Shekau.

There had been little feedback from ISIS, apart from a few references to Nigerian jihadis in recent issues of the English-language Dabiq magazine.

ISIS set up a Twitter account on which Saturday's message was linked, Zenn said. The Twitter handle was mutually promoted by Boko Haram and ISIS.

In spite of these calls to allegiance, U.S. intelligence officials have some doubts the two groups would get along.

Even if they have similar fundamentalist interpretations of Islam, according to CIA analysis, Boko Haram is very African and rooted in that region's Islamic practices. ISIS' Arab leadership and membership tends to have racist attitudes toward blacks, not unlike the society they come from.

Overall, ISIS leaders view Shekau as inferior, partly for racist reasons, the CIA indicated at a briefing for reporters.