Islamic State (IS) militants have accepted a pledge of allegiance by the Nigerian-grown Boko Haram extremist group, a spokesman for the Islamic State movement said on Thursday.
The development comes as both movements, which are among the most ruthless in the world, are under increasing military pressure and have sustained setbacks on the battlefield.
The group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant seized much of northern and western Iraq last summer, gaining control of about a third of both Iraq and Syria.
Photo: Reuters
However, it is now struggling against Iraqi forces seeking to recapture former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, while coming under fire from US-led coalition airstrikes in other parts of the country and in Syria.
Boko Haram, meanwhile, has been weakened by a multinational force that has dislodged it from a score of northeastern Nigerian towns.
However, its new Twitter account, increasingly slick and more frequent video messages, and a new media arm are considered signs that the group is now being helped by IS propagandists.
Then on Saturday last week, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau posted an audio recording online that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
On Thursday, the Islamic State group’s media arm, al-Furqan, in an audio recording by spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, said that Boko Haram’s pledge of allegiance has been accepted, claiming the caliphate has now expanded to west Africa.
Al-Adnani urged foreign fighters from around the world to migrate and join Boko Haram.
“We announce our allegiance to the Caliph of the Muslims... and will hear and obey in times of difficulty and prosperity, in hardship and ease, and to endure being discriminated against, and not to dispute about rule with those in power, except in case of evident infidelity regarding that which there is a proof from Allah,” the message said.
J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington, noted the IS group’s quick acceptance of Boko Haram’s allegiance, saying that the bond highlights a new risk.
“Militants finding it increasingly harder to get to Syria and Iraq may choose instead to go to northeastern Nigeria and internationalize that conflict,” he said.
In the past — as was the case with IS affiliates in Egypt, Yemen and Libya — it took weeks for the Islamic State to respond to a pledge of allegiance.
“The prompt — one might even say ‘fast-tracked’ — acceptance by the so-called Islamic State of Boko Haram’s pledge of allegiance” underscores that both needed the propaganda boost from the affiliation, Pham added.
Boko Haram’s pledge comes as the militants reportedly were amassing in the northeastern Nigerian town of Gwoza, considered their headquarters, for a showdown with the Chadian-led multinational force.
Boko Haram killed an estimated 10,000 people last year, and it is blamed for the abduction in April last year of more than 275 schoolgirls. Thousands of Nigerians have fled to neighboring Chad.
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