So Hideous!!: Leaders of Al Qaeda Unwilling To Condone Boko Haram [Must Read]

First formed in the early 2000s, Boko Haram grew out of an ultraconservative Islamic movement of well-educated students. The group grew overtly political only later, under the leadership of its charismatic founder, Mohamed Yusuf.

                                                                                                                                           IMAGE: Aljazeera

Its nickname in the African language of Hausa, Boko Haram, is usually roughly translated to mean that “deceptive” or “Western” education is “forbidden.” But scholars say that the phrase had a kind of double meaning that was at once religious and social in the context of northern Nigeria.

Western education was available only to a very small elite who typically traveled to British universities and then returned to rule from the capital over the impoverished North, and ending the tyranny of that elite was the main objective of Mr. Yusuf’s movement.

Mr. Yusuf and Boko Haram tapped into growing anger among northern Nigerians at their poverty and lack of opportunity as well as the humiliating abuses of the government’s security forces, said Paul Lubeck, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who studies the group. At first, even as Boko Haram turned to violent opposition to the government, the group avoided civilian casualties.

“They generated a lot of support because they didn’t kill many innocent people,” Professor Lubeck said.

That changed in July, 2009, after about 70 Boko Haram fighters armed with guns and hand grenades attacked a mosque and police station in the town of Bauchi. About 55 people were killed in the battle, according to an American diplomatic cable about the episodes that was later released by WikiLeaks.

The next day, Nigerian security forces retaliated with a brutal crackdown that killed more than 700 people, including many innocent bystanders. Security officers paraded Mr. Yusuf before television cameras and then summarily executed him in front of a crowd outside a police station — an episode that the group’s adherents often recall with horror as the decisive moment in their turn to wider violence.

Three weeks later, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb — originally an Algerian Islamist insurgency that found advantages in publicly linking itself to Al Qaeda’s infamy — issued a public statement reaching out to Boko Haram in a public expression of brotherly sympathy.

Boko Haram’s remaining members scattered to other African countries, where many scholars argue they would have received a welcome from Al Qaeda affiliates. The Algerian government has said that some of Boko Haram’s fugitive members received training in Algerian camps from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Boko Haram itself eventually circulated video footage that purported to show some of its members training in Somalia with fighters from the Al Qaeda affiliate there, the Shabab.

Professor Lubeck said other fragments of evidence have surfaced as well, such as cellphones belonging to Boko Haram fighters that were seized in a raid by the government of Niger.

But whether with help from Al Qaeda or other sponsors, Boko Haram soon returned to Nigeria far more sophisticated and better equipped. In late 2010, under the new leadership of Abubakar Shekau, formerly the group’s second in command, Boko Haram begun staging more lethal attacks.

Instead of throwing hand grenades or gas-bombs, Boko Haram’s fighters began to conduct a campaign of assassinations by gunfire from motorcycles. (The government ultimately banned motorcycles form the areas where they were active.) They also drove pickup trucks mounted with artillery. The vehicles, Nigerian officials say, were traded out of Libya after the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

And Boko Haram became increasingly indiscriminate. Mr. Shekau, the leader who claimed to be in communication with God, said that the sole purpose of its violence was to demonstrate the incapacity of the Nigerian state. "Shekau initiated this brutal killing of innocent people," Mr. Lubeck said.

Ms. Bruton of the Atlantic Council said: "The guy is unhinged."

Mr. Shekau has also continued to express his admiration for Al Qaeda and its ideology. But it remained “an overwhelmingly locally focused group, recruiting locally,” Mr. Lubeck said, adding: "To say that it was part of the international Islamist conspiracy distorts things. There is no systematic or strategic connection."

On Wednesday, as Western governments prepared to send help to find the kidnapped girls, there were no reports of any new expressions of support for Boko Haram from Al Qaeda.

Source: This article is culled from an article titled "Abduction of Girls an Act Not Even Al Qaeda Can Condone" by By ADAM NOSSITER and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK published on The New York Times.