On
August 3, the Islamic State announced in an interview of Barnawi published in
its Arabic-language magazine Al-Naba that Barnawi is
the new wali, or governor, of the Nigeria-based militant
organization. Barnawi is the son of the late Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf,
for whom Shekau had served as a deputy.
Shekau,
who had led Boko Haram since 2010, immediately followed this announcement with
his own audio release
acknowledging that he was no longer the group’s wali. The audio message mentioned
that he had reverted to his previous role as the imam of Jamaatu Ahl al-Sunna
lil-Dawa wal-Jihad, or JAS, which is the original name of Boko Haram.
Shekau’s
choice of language when stating the group’s name is significant, as Shekau is
asserting his authority over a construct that exists independent of the Islamic
State’s West African Province.
Shekau said he still recognized Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi as the Islamic State’s caliph, but that his rivals in Barnawi’s
faction had staged a coup against him by manipulating the Islamic State’s
leadership and cutting Shekau off from corresponding with Baghdadi.
This claim
deliberately parallels Shekau’s position to the Islamic State’s at the time of
its split from al-Qaeda: It is exactly what the Islamic State alleged that Abu
Khalid al-Suri had done to them with respect to al-Qaeda’s senior leadership
from 2013 until the Islamic State’s final expulsion from the al-Qaeda network.
Further drawing that parallel, Shekau lamented that Baghdadi had not responded
to his messages about Barnawi’s acts of “great polytheism.” Lack of
responsiveness was one of the Islamic State’s grievances against al-Qaeda.
Barnawi’s
faction has a clear position on Shekau. Its perspective is explained in detail
in a private audio
by Barnawi’s ally Mamman Nur
that has since been made public. A Cameroonian who served as a liaison between
Boko Haram and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and had masterminded the
attack on the United
Nations’ headquarters in Abuja in 2011, Nur discussed Shekau’s
excessive takfirism in the audio recording. Another speaker on the same audio,
Abu Fatima, listed members of Barnawi’s faction that Shekau’s faction had
killed “without evidence.”
On
August 7, Shekau
appeared in a video for the first time since February 2015. In the
first part of the video, a masked militant led more than 100 fighters in a
march before giving a speech directed to Baghdadi. In it, the militant said
that the “soldiers of JAS” stand with Shekau, and claimed that Baghdadi did not
respond to any of Shekau’s eight messages to Baghdadi.
Though the masked
militant described news of Barnawi’s appointment as wali as “sudden,” he said
JAS would not remove its allegiance to Baghdadi—but they would also not follow
Barnawi, who is not “authentically salafist.” Toward the end of the video, a
camouflage-clad Shekau fires a gun in the air while two militants stand beside
him in what appears to be northeastern Nigeria’s Sambisa Forest.
The video also
carried the JAS logo, rather than that used by the Islamic State’s West African
Province. The logo utilized may be another sign that Shekau is resurrecting an
organization that exists outside the Islamic State’s formal structure. (This
logo appeared once again on August 14, when Shekau’s trusted
spokesman interviewed the captured Chibok schoolgirls in a new JAS video.)
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Chief Executive Officer of Valens Global, a consulting firm that focuses on the challenges posed by violent non-state actors. Jacob Zenn is a Fellow of African Affairs at The Jamestown Foundation, a Senior Consultant at Valens Global, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, where he co-teaches a course on violent non-state actors with Gartenstein-Ross. Zenn also works on projects in countering violent extremism in Nigeria.
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