An earlier article from the Combating Terrorism Center publication CTC Sentinel, also has much interesting insight into Ansaru and the nature of its links with Boko Haram
Cooperation or Competition: Boko Haram and Ansaru After the Mali Intervention
Mar 27, 2013
Author: Jacob Zenn
Since the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram launched its first attack in northern Nigeria in September 2010, it has carried out more than 700 attacks that have killed more than 3,000 people. Boko Haram primarily targets Nigerian government officials and security officers, traditional and secular Muslim leaders, and Christians. It has also attacked schools, churches, cell phone towers, media houses, and government facilities, including border posts, police stations and prisons. Since January 2012, however, a new militant group has attracted more attention in northern Nigeria due to its threat to foreign interests. Jama`at Ansar al-Muslimin fi Bilad al-Sudan (commonly known as Ansaru) announced that it split from Boko Haram in January 2012, claiming that Boko Haram was “inhuman” for killing innocent Muslims as well as for targeting defectors. Ansaru’s almost exclusive focus on foreign targets may also explain why the two groups could not coexist.
Boko Haram seeks revenge against the Nigerian government and security forces for killing its founder Muhammad Yusuf and 1,000 of his followers during a four-day series of clashes in July 2009. Ansaru fights to restore the “lost dignity” of the Sokoto Caliphate, which was founded in 1804 by the Fulani shaykh Usman dan Fodio in northern Cameroon, northern Nigeria, and southern Niger, and lasted until the United Kingdom and France colonized the region and introduced Western education and Christianity in the 19th century.
This article reviews Ansaru’s attacks on foreign interests in Nigeria, the possible role of al-Qa`ida operative Mokhtar Belmokhtar in steering Ansaru toward kidnapping foreigners despite Boko Haram’s rejection of the tactic, and why al-Qa`ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) chose to collaborate more with Ansaru than Boko Haram. Finally, the article assesses the future of Ansaru and Boko Haram now that the French-led military intervention has driven AQIM from northern Mali and potentially killed Belmokhtar.
Ansaru’s Rise
To date, Ansaru may have executed six major attacks. Only the four operations carried out after Ansaru announced its formation on January 26, 2012, however, can be confidently attributed to the group.
First Operation
Ansaru may have carried out its first operation in May 2011 when Chris McManus and Franco Lamolinara—a British and Italian engineer of an Italian construction company—were kidnapped near the border with Niger in Kebbi State, northwest Nigeria. A previously unknown group called “al-Qa`ida in the Lands Beyond the Sahel” took responsibility in a proof-of-life video showing the two hostages blindfolded and kneeling in front of three veiled militants. The video was sent to Mauritania’s Agence Nouakchott d’Information (ANI), which usually receives AQIM videos. Employing the same Mauritanian negotiator that AQIM used in several previous kidnappings, the militants reportedly demanded $6 million and the release of prisoners in West Africa in return for the two hostages.
On March 7, 2012, Nigerian security forces broke up a Boko Haram Shura Council meeting in Kaduna led by Abu Muhammed, who defected from Boko Haram due to disagreements with Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau. The security forces determined from phone call logs and interrogations of the Shura Council members that Abu Muhammed was responsible for the British and Italian hostages and that the hostages were transferred to a house in Sokoto, north of Kebbi State. On March 8, 2012, the captors shot both hostages when they saw helicopters of the UK Special Boat Service carrying out surveillance on the house. Soon after, UK and Nigerian forces killed eight of the captors and detained eight others in a late effort to free the hostages. The detained captors confessed that they had “standing orders to kill the hostages immediately on sight of security agents, since we were not sure of surviving an encounter with the security men.” This established a precedent that any attempt to free hostages would lead to their immediate deaths.
In June 2012, a Boko Haram informant alleged long-time AQIM member Khalid al-Barnawi coordinated the kidnappings of the British and Italian hostages with Abu Muhammed, and that Abu Muhammed had trained under al-Barnawi at an AQIM-run camp in Algeria. That same month, the U.S. government designated al-Barnawi a “global terrorist” along with two other militants, Abubakar Adam Kambar, who trained under al-Barnawi at the AQIM camp in Algeria, and Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau. Nigerian security sources reported that members of Shekau’s faction tipped off Nigerian intelligence about Abu Muhammed and other “traitorous” cells in northwestern Nigeria that broke from Shekau and did not focus on fighting the Nigerian government. Shekau’s spokesman also denied that Boko Haram carried out the kidnapping on the day after the hostages were killed, and said, “We have never been involved in hostage-taking, and we never ask for ransom.”
Although Ansaru did not yet exist as a formal organization at the time of the kidnapping, some suspect that Khalid al-Barnawi later formed Ansaru. Additionally, when speaking before the UK House of Commons in November 2012, Home Office Minister Mark Harper said that Ansaru is “also believed to be responsible for the murder of British national Christopher McManus and his Italian co-worker Franco Lamolinara in March 2012.”
Second Operation
On January 26, 2012, the same day Ansaru announced its split from Boko Haram by circulating flyers in Kano, a German engineer was kidnapped in Kano. In March 2012, AQIM’s official media wing, al-Andalus, took credit for the kidnapping and demanded in a video sent to ANI in Mauritania that Germany release from prison a Turkish-born female jihadist website administrator whose German husband fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan and was arrested in 2007 while planning to bomb Ramstein Air Base. AQIM also reminded Germany about the “recent lesson taught to the UK [Special Boat Service] by the mujahidin,” referring to the British and Italian hostages killed in Sokoto on March 8, 2012.
On March 26, 2012, Nigerian security forces raided a shop in Kano and detained the kidnapping cell’s leader, a Mauritanian, and three Nigerian accomplices, who used the Mauritanian’s shop as a base. Documents in the Mauritanian’s laptop, including an AQIM operations manual, led Nigerian special forces to carry out a rescue operation of the German engineer in May 2012, but the captors shot the hostage immediately. AQIM warned European countries not to engage in “foolishness” during future hostage negotiations and for Germany to stop violating Muslims and their holy sites.
This kidnapping was claimed by AQIM and carried out by an AQIM member and local militants. Evidence uncovered from Kaduna, where Abu Muhammed was arrested, reportedly provided leads about the cell, and AQIM referred to the first operation in Sokoto in its claim. As AQIM was not known to operate in Nigeria and Boko Haram did not engage in kidnapping operations at this time, it is plausible that Ansaru played a role in the kidnapping, especially since it followed the group’s modus operandi.
Third Operation
Starting in June 2012, Ansaru sent a series of e-mails to the Kaduna-based Desert Herald newspaper and released English- and Hausa-language YouTube videos affirming that Ansaru disapproved of Boko Haram’s killing of Muslims. In these communications, Ansaru said they would target the citizens and interests of “foreign Christian enemies in all parts of Africa,” but that Ansaru’s and Boko Haram’s missions were otherwise the same. Then, on November 26, 2012, 40 Ansaru militants attacked the Special Anti-Robbery Squad prison in Abuja with the “assistance of internal collaborators,” according to the military and police. The attack freed senior Boko Haram commanders and was praised in a YouTube video from Boko Haram leader Shekau, which was addressed to the “Soldiers of God in the Islamic State of Mali.” Ansaru’s freeing of Boko Haram prisoners and Shekau’s video statement suggested that despite the circumstances surrounding Ansaru’s formation, the two groups were capable of supporting each other’s mutual objectives.
This operation in Abuja marked the first time Ansaru formally claimed responsibility for an attack.
Fourth Operation
On December 19, 2012, 30 Ansaru militants kidnapped a Frenchman from the compound of an energy company near the border with Niger in Katsina State, northwestern Nigeria. According to the Katsina police commissioner, the “coordination, speed, and expertise” of the operation suggested that employees of the company were involved in an “inside job.” Ansaru claimed the kidnapping and said that it would continue to kidnap French citizens until France ended its ban on the Islamic veil for women and abandoned its plans to intervene militarily in northern Mali.
Fifth Operation
On January 19, 2013, Ansaru militants, possibly acting on a tip, ambushed a convoy of three buses carrying 180 Nigerian soldiers through Okene, Kogi State, en route to Mali, killing two soldiers. Ansaru claimed the troops “were aiming to demolish the Islamic Empire of Mali” and warned African countries to “stop helping Western countries fight Muslims.” The attack revealed that Ansaru was able to operate in Kogi State, which is considered a “staging point” for attacking southern Nigeria because it has direct road links to all three of Nigeria’s southern zones.
Sixth Operation
On February 16, 2013, Ansaru assaulted a prison and then kidnapped seven foreign engineers from a construction site in northeastern Nigeria’s Bauchi State. Ansaru warned that any attempt to free the hostages would result in the “same happenings” as the previous rescue attempts in Sokoto and Kano, and said that the kidnappings were in response to European “atrocities” in Afghanistan and Mali. On March 9, 2013, Ansaru announced that it killed the “seven Christian foreigners” in an online statement with a photo and an accompanying video of an armed and camouflaged militant standing over four corpses. Ansaru said it executed the hostages because of Nigerian media reports that British “jet fighters, soldiers, and intelligence” landed in Abuja to prepare for a rescue mission and that UK and Nigerian security forces had killed Muslims in previous attempts to rescue “Christian hostages.”
Belmokhtar’s Role in Ansaru
Since the formation of AQIM in 2006-2007, AQIM’s Arab-Algerian southern zone commanders, such as Mokhtar Belmokhtar, sought to expand their operations from southern Algeria southwards into Mali, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria to target the increasing number of foreigners and energy and mining companies in the Sahel. One factor constraining AQIM, however, was that its northern African members did not master the southern Sahel’s physical and human terrain as well as the Tuaregs and sub-Saharan Africans from the region. As a result, AQIM “coached” sub-Saharan Africans—such as Khalid al-Barnawi, Abu Muhammed and Abubakar Adam Kambar—in kidnappings and criminal activities and used sub-Saharan recruits as couriers between AQIM and local Islamist militant groups such as Boko Haram. An example of this strategy’s effectiveness was the January 7, 2011, kidnapping of two Frenchmen from a restaurant in the French and Hausa-speaking capital city of Niamey, Niger. The two men were scouted by a Nigerian Boko Haram member who provided their location to other Hausa, Arabic and French-speaking members of Belmokhtar’s Veiled Brigades. The hostages were both killed the following day when French military helicopters fired on the kidnappers as their vehicle convoy approached the Malian border. Boko Haram never claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, even though one of its members was reportedly involved.
In 2011, AQIM may have moved from recruiting sub-Saharan Africans to overseeing them form their own groups with indigenous ideologies that appealed to sub-Saharan Africans in a way that AQIM’s ideology did not. The two sub-Saharan African groups, Ansaru and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), likely conducted their first kidnapping operations in May 2011 and October 2011, respectively, while MUJAO announced its formation in a video statement in December 2011 and Ansaru through flyers distributed in Kano in January 2012. The two groups were independent of AQIM in name, but MUJAO’s military commander was long-time AQIM kidnapping mastermind Oumar Ould Hamaha, an Arab from northern Mali and a relative of Belmokhtar’s, and Ansaru is suspected of being led by Khalid al-Barnawi, who fought under Belmokhtar in Mauritania and Algeria in the mid-2000s and carried out kidnappings in Niger. Both Ansaru and MUJAO adopted names reflecting their desired areas of operations, Biladis Sudan (Black Africa) and Gharb Afriqqiya (West Africa), respectively, and considered themselves to be the “ideological descendants” of Usman dan Fodio and other pre-colonial West African Islamic leaders who “fought the colonial invaders,” although in practice Ansaru operated in northern Nigeria and MUJAO operated in Mali, Senegal, Algeria and Mauritania.
Evidence suggests that Ansaru and MUJAO may have been among the elite units Belmokhtar trained for attacking Western interests in the Sahel. Ansaru, for example, followed Belmokhtar’s kidnapping style by infiltrating foreign energy companies and targeting European employees whose countries were susceptible to ransoms and political demands.
If not for the French-led military operation in northern Mali, the relationship between Belmokhtar and the two sub-Saharan groups would likely have continued, although both groups may have become more independent with the development of their own media wings, ideologies, and in Ansaru’s case leadership in Nigeria outside of AQIM’s area of operations. According to Nigerian intelligence documents, an “Algerian terrorist group” and Boko Haram had a “long-term partnership,” whereby the Algerian group would provide Boko Haram with installments of $250,000 and select Boko Haram members for training in kidnapping and bomb-making so the Boko Haram members could kidnap “white” expatriates in Nigeria and transfer the hostages to hideouts in the desert in exchange for more money and arms from the Algerians. These Boko Haram members may have been Abu Muhammed and other Nigerians involved in the kidnappings in Kebbi in May 2011 and the Algerian group may have been Belmokhtar’s men.
The discovery that hundreds of Nigerian militants were in northern Mali and that Ansaru flyers were found in Belmokhtar’s compound in Gao the day after he fled the city suggests that Belmokhtar’s connection to Ansaru was still strong at the time of the French-led military intervention in February 2013.
Why Ansaru, Not Boko Haram?
AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel offered “consolation” to Boko Haram after the clashes with Nigerian security forces in July 2009 left Boko Haram founder Muhammad Yusuf and 1,000 of his followers dead. In February 2010, Droukdel also offered to provide Boko Haram with “men, arms and ammunition” to “defend” Nigerian Muslims against the “Christian minority” in Nigeria. In July 2010, before the one year anniversary of the July 2009 clashes, Yusuf’s former deputy, Abubakar Shekau, emerged from hiding and “sent condolences” from the mujahidin in Nigeria to key al-Qa`ida leaders, including Usama bin Ladin, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the amir of AQIM, and warned the United States that “jihad has just begun.” This and subsequent statements from Shekau showed that Boko Haram identified with al-Qa`ida’s ideology, but that Boko Haram was “waging jihad in the country called Nigeria.”
From July 2009 until Boko Haram launched its first attack in September 2010, many Boko Haram members retreated to Nigeria’s borderlands with Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, and solicited, according to one report, as much as 40%[59] of their funding from abroad. From September 2010 until August 2011, Boko Haram attacks escalated as President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from the south, was inaugurated in Abuja in April 2011, and with Boko Haram’s first vehicle-borne suicide bombings at the Federal Police Headquarters and UN Headquarters in Abuja in June and August 2011. In August 2011, Nigeria and Niger confirmed that increasing numbers of Boko Haram members were receiving weapons from AQIM and traveling to Niger for training with AQIM.
AQIM’s support may have helped Boko Haram evolve from a Taliban-inspired religious movement under Yusuf into a full-fledged militant movement under Shekau. There were several factors, however, that likely compelled AQIM to coordinate kidnapping operations in Nigeria with Ansaru, rather than with Boko Haram.
First, Boko Haram has always said that it does not carry out kidnappings and, at least until February 2013, did not carry out kidnappings or target Western personnel or institutions—with the exception of the attack on the UN Headquarters in Abuja in August 2011. This would have made it difficult for Belmokhtar to coordinate with Boko Haram since his operations almost exclusively targeted Western personnel and facilities.
Second, Boko Haram was based in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno State, which borders Niger but is more than 1,000 miles from northern Mali, where some of AQIM’s brigades were based. In contrast, Ansaru was based in northwestern Nigeria, which is only 300 miles from Mali. This suggests that Ansaru was in closer operational range to AQIM and Belmokhtar’s militants. Ansaru may have also avoided establishing cells in northeastern Nigeria because Boko Haram threatened to kill defectors.
Third, even when Boko Haram targeted churches and government offices, the casualties often included more Muslim civilians than Christians or government employees. This may have alienated AQIM’s leadership, which broke away from the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria in the late 1990s because it killed many Algerian civilians during the country’s civil war. Instead, AQIM’s leadership focused on targeting the Algerian government and security forces in rural areas and international interests, including the United Nations, and kidnapping Westerners.
Finally, AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel reportedly dismissed Belmokhtar as a result of him “straying from the right path,” in the words of one Malian official, and focusing on criminal activities and kidnappings. This may have facilitated Belmokhtar’s support of Khalid al-Barnawi—who also feuded with members of AQIM in Algeria over kidnappings in Nigeria—at the expense of Shekau, who had a closer historical connection to Droukdel.
Conclusion
Even if France and its West African allies have driven AQIM out of northern Mali, Ansaru and Boko Haram are likely self-sustainable and able to continue attacks. Ansaru relies mostly on its proven kidnapping expertise, and Boko Haram on assassinations and attacks on soft targets. Both Ansaru and Boko Haram will also likely recruit militants who fought and obtained new skills from warfare in Mali. The Boko Haram attack on an army barracks in Monguno, Borno State, on March 3, 2013, in which the militants mounted weapons on four-wheel-drive vehicles, and the discovery of improvised fighting vehicles in a raid on a Boko Haram hideout in Maiduguri, Borno State, on March 9, 2012, suggest that Boko Haram has already learned new methods of fighting from the Islamist militants in Mali.
An increase in the number of recruits from other West African countries or Nigerians with experience in Mali could also enable Ansaru and Boko Haram to carry out attacks or kidnappings in southern Nigeria or in Nigeria’s neighboring countries of Benin, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon in revenge for these countries’ support of the French-led intervention. Shekau’s personal exposure to the war in Mali or, if he did not take refuge in Gao, his contacts to militants who returned to Nigeria from Mali could cause him to adopt a more regional view of the insurgency. Shekau’s approval of a Boko Haram cell’s kidnapping of a seven-member French family in northern Cameroon on February 19, 2013, shows that Shekau no longer prohibits targeting foreign interests and that some Boko Haram cells are shifting toward Ansaru’s strategy. Moreover, Shekau’s warning that Boko Haram will attack Cameroon if it continues to arrest Boko Haram members could signify an expansion of the insurgency while also deterring other countries, such as Niger and Chad, from cracking down on Boko Haram cells operating on their territory.
Finally, if Ansaru and Boko Haram are strained for resources as a result of AQIM’s retreat from northern Mali, the two groups may look past their differences and cooperate. Since Ansaru announced its formation in January 2012, Boko Haram has tried to distance itself from the perception that it kills Muslim civilians. Ansaru and Boko Haram still revere Boko Haram founder Muhammad Yusuf, and their members may move fluidly between groups and form partnerships to target mutual enemies: the Nigerian government, France and the West. They may also collaborate on refining their tactics as well as expanding their areas of operations to locate new targets and eliminate Western and Christian influence from Nigeria and the region.
Jacob Zenn is an analyst of African and Eurasian affairs for The Jamestown Foundation, and is a Senior Regional Analyst of Courage Services, INC. He authored “Northern Nigeria’s Boko Haram: The Prize in al-Qaeda’s Africa Strategy,” which was published by The Jamestown Foundation in November 2012, and conducted field research in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon in June 2012. He speaks Arabic, French and Swahili.
The Jamestown Foundation also publishes articles on global terrorism and is worth monitoring on the terror threats in the Sahel.