Boko haram bid to form alliance with ISIS

Boko Haram's bid toforge an alliance with the Islamic Stategroup in sub-Saharan Africa will provide only a propaganda boostfor now, but in the long termit could internationalise a conflictrestrictedto Nigeria for nearly six years, analysts say.
The effortcomesas bothIslamic extremistgroups have lost ground in recentweeksand as Nigeria's neighbours are forming a multinational army to confront Boko Haram.
By pledging allegiance to ISIS, Nigeria's home-grown militants have severedtiesto al-Qaeda, which is more powerful in theregion, said Charlie Winter, a researcher atthe London-based Quilliam Foundation.
Boko Haram has never been an affiliate ofal-Qaeda, but itsmilitants fought alongside al-Qaeda-linked groups during northernMali's Islamic uprising two years ago, and some of itsfighters have been trained in Somalia by al-Shabab, another group with ties to al-Qaeda, according to the group's propaganda.
Boko Haram'sleader, Abubakar Shekau, reportedlypledged allegiance toISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an audio postedSaturday on Twitter. It could take three or four weeksfor ISIS toformally respond, as has been the casewith affiliates in Egypt, Yemen and Libya.
An alliance "would lend a more imposing quality toIslamic Statewith itsexpansionist model," Winter said. The move was symbolically "a striking development," but he doubted it would "change thingson the ground in either Nigeria or Iraq and Syria”.
But"over time this pledgeof allegiance mightlead to the internationalisation" ofa threat that until now has been mostlyconfined toa single region of Nigeria with occasional spillover into neighbouring countries, warned J Peter Pham, director of the Washington-based Atlantic Council's Africa Centre.
Boko Haram was little known until its April 2014 abduction of nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls froma schoolin theremotetown of Chibok drew international outrage. At thetime, al-Baghdadi praised the Nigerian insurgents and said themass kidnapping was justification for the ISIS abduction of Yazidi women and girls in northernIraq.
A partnership with ISIS could also be a recruiting tool. Fighters fromISIS franchises in North Africa who find it harder to migrate to theMiddle East may choose to move to a Boko Haram emirateinstead, Pham said.
The international support pouring into anti-Boko Haram forcesfrom the United States, France, the United Kingdom and others"may render theNigerian militants' fightall the moreattractive to theseforeign jihadists," Pham said.
The core of Boko Haram'sestimated4 000 to 6 000 militants is from the Kanuri tribe, which spreadsacross colonial-era borders in a region where peopleshow stronger allegiance to tribesthanstates.
In August, Boko Haram declared it was reviving an ancient Islamic caliphate in northeasternNigeria that spilled over those borders, in a move copying the Islamic Stategroup. ButBoko Haram's brutality, including beheadings and enslavement, predates and in some casesarguably exceedsthat of ISIS, according to Pham.
Pham expectsBoko Haram to engage in evenmore gruesome tacticsif it wins thesupport ofISIS.
"The upcoming Nigerian electionsand potential postelectionupheaval provide too rich of a targetenvironment for the jihadists to pass up," Pham said.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan is running for re-election in a 28 March ballot that analysts say is too close to call and that Boko Haram has threatenedto disrupt, calling democracy a corrupt Westernconcept.
In some ways, Pham said, an alliance could work against Boko Haram. Becominganother ISIS province could meanlosing its ethnic appeal among Kanuris and its appeal among ordinary Nigerians for whom denunciations of corruption involving Nigeria's political elitesresonate.
Joining ISIS would also require major strategychanges by Boko Haram that could cause friction, Winter said, explaining that Boko Haram would have toadopt the ISIS model of an Islamist utopia by providing health care and othersocial servicestaken on by ISIS in its state-building efforts.
Boko Haram has seizeda large swath ofnortheasternNigeria in thepast eight months- an area perhaps as large as Belgium. Butit has largely brutalised peoplewho remain behind, enforcing itsversion ofstrict Islamic law by carrying out public whippings and severingof limbs of alleged transgressors.
The possibility ofan ISIS-Boko Haram alliance has been on the table for months, and Saturday'spledge probably followed weeksof negotiations about how each group can benefit, Wintersaid.
Boko Haram may expectfinancial support fromISIS, which is still probably the wealthiestextremistgroup in the world despite recent dropsin the price of oil that is themainstay of the ISIS economy, Winter said.
Moredifficult would be ISIS support in training and manpower, given the geographical challenges, hesaid.
An alliance provides both groups with an immediate propaganda boost. Boko Haram standsto receive a new presencein social media, thanksto ISIS propagandists whose slick videos could replaceBoko Haram's often incoherent and muddled messages.
And if theISIS network of supporters startspreading Boko Haram propaganda, that will "project its influenceand exaggerate itsmenace," Wintersaid.
ProfessorAbubakar Mustaphasaid just theidea ofBoko Haram symbolically joining forceswith ISIS enough to frighten some Nigerians.
"It will outrage and scare people," said theprofessor of Islamic Studies at Bayero University Kano, in northern Nigeria.