I’ll Fight Nigeria, Whole World, Boko Haram’s Shekau Boasts In New Video
Boko Haram’s shadowy leader Abubakar Shekau has appeared in a new
video vowing to fight on, shrugging off an apparent split in the
hardline jihadist group blamed for thousands of deaths since 2009.
This screengrab taken on August 8,
2016 from a Boko Haram video released by the Nigerian Islamist extremist
group Boko Haram and obtained by AFP. Vanguard File
“I… Abubakar Ash-Shakawy (Shekau), the leader of Jama’atu Ahlissunnah
Lidda’awati Wal Jihad, made it a duty for myself (to fight) Nigeria and
the whole world,” Shekau said in the video released on Sunday, using
the group’s name since it declared allegiance to the so-called Islamic
State.
Last week, Shekau said in an audio message he was still head of the
group despite his purported replacement by Sheikh Abu Musab al-Barnawi, a
former Boko Haram spokesman.
“We have no desire to fight our Muslim brethren,” Shekau, who last appeared in March, said in the 24-minute video.
Shekau ridiculed suggestions that he was dead, and looked more composed and energetic than in previous appearances.
“I’m alive by the permission of Allah,” he said in his speech in
Arabic and Hausa, adding that he would only die when his time came.
In the video he is wearing camouflage gear and holding a machine gun,
standing between two Islamist fighters in balaclavas armed with
rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
He taunted President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration and condemned
Western countries including the United States, France, Germany and “the
tyrants of the United Nonsense (UN)”.
At the end of his speech — apparently filmed in Boko Haram’s
stronghold in the Sambisa forest of northeastern Nigeria — he fired off
rounds of ammunition into the air.
His absence in recent months had sparked speculation about his fate and whether he had been deposed as Boko Haram’s chief.
Barnawi’s appointment was contained in a magazine issued by the
Islamic State group, to which Boko Haram pledged allegiance in March
last year.
Shekau dismissed Barnawi as an infidel who condoned living in an un-Islamic society without waging jihad.
Shekau became leader after Nigerian security forces killed the group’s founding chief Mohammed Yusuf in 2009.
Omar Mahmood, a security analyst with US-based Foreign Policy
Research Institute who has spent the past five years researching Boko
Haram, said Shekau was removed because of his highhandness and
ruthlessness.
“One thing that has remained constant, however, is the focus on
attacks against regional security forces, with Muslim civilian deaths
still ignored. This aspect seems to be a key concern for IS
propagandists,” Mahmood said.
“By contrast, Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the man announced as the new
leader, clearly stated in his al-Naba interview that attacks against
Muslim civilians, mosques and markets will not be a staple of his
leadership.”
Sources close to Boko Haram said Barnawi, aged in his early twenties,
is none other than Habib Yusuf, the eldest son of group founder Yusuf.
They said he was put under Shekau’s care following the death of his
father, but the pair fell out over ideological and operational
differences.
Boko Haram has been blamed for some 20,000 deaths and displacing more
than 2.6 million people since it launched a brutal insurgency in
Nigeria in 2009.
Nigerian forces, with the support of regional troops, have recaptured
swathes of territory lost to the jihadists since they launched a
military campaign in February 2014.
Source: Vanguard
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