Boko Haram bid to join IS offers a propaganda boost to both

Associated Press

Boko Haram’s bid to forge an alliance with the Islamic State group in sub-Saharan Africa will provide only a propaganda boost for now, but in the long term, it could internationalize a conflict restricted to Nigeria for nearly six years, analysts say.

The effort comes as both Islamic extremist groups have lost ground in recent weeks and as Nigeria’s neighbors are forming a multinational army to confront Boko Haram.

By pledging allegiance to IS, Nigeria’s home-grown militants have severed ties to al-Qaida, which is more powerful in the region, said Charlie Winter, a researcher at the London-based Quilliam Foundation.

Boko Haram has never been an affiliate of al-Qaida’s, but its militants fought alongside al-Qaida-linked groups during northern Mali’s Islamic uprising two years ago, and some of its fighters have been trained in Somalia by al-Shabab, another group with ties to al-Qaida, according to the group’s propaganda.

Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, reportedly pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an audio posted Saturday on Twitter. It could take three or four weeks for IS to formally respond.

An alliance “would lend a more imposing quality to Islamic State with its expansionist model,” Winter said.

But “over time, this pledge of allegiance might lead to the internationalization” of a threat that until now has been mostly confined to a single region of Nigeria with occasional spillover into neighboring countries, warned J. Peter Pham, director of the Washington-based Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.

Boko Haram was little known until its April 2014 abduction of nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls from a school in the remote town of Chibok drew international outrage. At the time, al-Baghdadi praised the Nigerian insurgents and said the mass kidnapping was justification for the IS abduction of Yazidi women and girls in northern Iraq.

A partnership with IS could also be a recruiting tool.