Terror Leaders, Abubakar Shekau & Abu Musab al-Barnawi
Recently, some suspected Boko Haram assailants stormed Tumur, a
sleepy community along the Nigerian border with Niger Republic and slit
the throats of 10 people, who the locals called “associate Boko Haram members.’’
It was gathered that the insurgents had crossed to the Nigerien
community from villages around Malam Fatori in Abadam Local Government
Area of Borno State. The 10 were victims of an emerging ideological
split and brutal supremacy battle between the hardhearted leader of the
Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, and the new point-man of the Islamic State
in West Africa-backed faction of the group, Abu Musab Al-Barnawi.
In the first week of August, this year, the ISIS put to an end, the
seven years of ruthless reign of Shekau, and in his place, anointed
Al-Barnawi, the son of the late Mohammed Yusuf, the founder of the
Nigeria-based Boko Haram, which recognised and paid allegiance to ISIS’s
proclaimed caliphate under Abubakar Al-Baghdadi, in March, 2015.
The confirmation that Shekau had been dethroned came from the
dreaded sect leader himself, in an audio message he released on August
4, which was the first in so many months, where he described the
breakaway leader as heretic. Soon after the new development, sporadic
fighting broke out between the two factions, one headed by Shekau and
the other by Al-Barnawi.
The rivalry, analysts claim, would break the spine of the Boko
Haram group, which was ranked the most deadly terrorist organisation on
earth by the Global Terrorism Index in 2015. The sect, according to the
report, was responsible for 6,644 deaths in 2014, compared to ISIS’s
6,073.
The Nigerian military has dismissed the reported division within
the ranks of the insurgents as a “drama” being staged by the group to
remain afloat and vowed to crush terrorist threats under whatever guise.
“When the terrorists besieged Tumur, they told the locals, who
were mostly Nigerians taking refuge there not to panic, but warned that
so and so persons must be produced to face the wrath of their betrayal,”
Ahmed Khalid, a resident of Abadam, who is now taking refuge in
Maiduguri, said of the first reported intra-group rivalry killing.
However, there are two different versions to the narrative as to
why only 10 people were brought out and killed in Tumur, even when the
Boko Haram invaders had all the opportunity to butcher everybody in the
village in the dead of night.
“From my findings, the 10 were supplying foodstuff to the
insurgents who lived in cluster of camps along the Nigerian border with
Niger. But they suddenly stopped the supplies, leaving the terrorists in
hunger and deprivation in the midst of constant offensive by the
Nigerian security forces. This was why they were trailed and killed,” Khalid said.
But a resident, Aisami Modu, said they were killed because they
shifted their loyalty from the camp of Shekau to that of his archrival,
Al-Barnawi.
“The problem started shortly after the Boko Haram split, and
those 10 people, who were traders and known to almost everyone in
surrounding communities, were loyal to Boko Haram, which is why we call
them: ‘associate members.’ They used to supply food, fuel, medicine and
cloths to the terrorists, even though they didn’t fight for them,” he said.
“But the Shekau camp got angry when they shifted their loyalty to the other camp; that was why they were killed.”
For the past four weeks, locals in Borno State said fierce
encounter had taken place between fighters loyal to Shekau and those
loyal to Al-Barnawi, struggling to displace one another. Five fighters
loyal to Shekau were killed during a battle between the two factions in a
community at the outskirts of Monguno last week, a local vigilante,
Kolo Kuroskawwa, disclosed.
Other sources said that at least 18 Boko Haram fighters from the
bushes around Monguno surrendered to the army, together with their
families, as a result of the infighting.
“There is serious disarray now, and most of the Boko Haram
fighters are apparently confused. Those loyal to Shekau are being
trailed by the other faction and vice versa. It is now killing, killing
and killing,” Kuroskawwa said.
“And you know that there are some Boko Haram fighters that were
forcefully conscripted, they are the ones that are now repenting and
taking advantage of the dispute to surrender themselves to the Nigerian
Army,” he said.
Similarly, residents told the AFP Wednesday that several fighters
from Shekau’s camp had been killed last Thursday in two separate gun
battles with IS-backed Barnawi gunmen in the Monguno area of Borno
State, near Lake Chad.
Mele Kaka, who lives in the area, told AFP: “The Barnawi faction
launched an offensive against the Shekau faction who were camped in the
villages of Yele and Arafa. “In Yele, the assailants killed three
people from the Shekau camp, injured one and took one with them, while
several were killed in Arafa,” he said by telephone from the state capital, Maiduguri. The attack prompted residents of Arafa to flee, he added.
Fighters from Barnawi camp had the previous day attacked gunmen
loyal to Shekau in Zuwa village in the nearby Marte district, killing an
unspecified number of people, Kaka said.
“The Barnawi fighters told villagers after each attack that
they were fighting the other camp because they had derailed from the
true jihad and were killing innocent people, looting their property and
burning their homes. They said such acts contravened the teachings of
Islam and true jihad,” he said.
Factions Divide Borno Into Two Jurisdictions
Findings by a reporter reveal that while the ISIS-backed Al-Barnawi
has an upper hand in northern part of Borno State, which shares borders
with Niger, Chad and Cameroon along the shores of the Lake Chad, Shekau
is still dominant in the central and southern parts of the state, where
the large swathes of the Sambisa forest are located.
Sources said Al-Barnawi was giving Shekau a “tough time in northern
Borno” by taking over the few places where the group had “some
influence.” Mamman Nur, the hitherto third in command to Shekau, who was
declared wanted by the United States, is seen as the actual ISIS
linkman in Nigeria, but is fronting Al-Barnawi as leader, in order to
retain the loyalty of the original supporters of Mohammed Yusuf.
A community leader from northern Borno, who is now living in Maiduguri, but does not want his name mentioned, said: “The
Al-Barnawi boys are trailing and killing Shekau’s boys in places like
Monguno, Kukawa, Damasak, Abadam, Marte and Kala-Balge, even though all
the two factions are being confronted by the Multi-National Joint Task
Force (MNJTF).”
“While only security officials can confirm if Al-Barnawi has
started receiving support from ISIS or not, what we know is that they
have black mercenaries from neighbouring countries who barely speak our
local dialect,” he added.
“But when you go to villages in Gwoza, Damboa and Chibok, which
are all not far from the Sambisa forest, you find out that the few
skirmishes being recorded recently are being perpetrated by the Shekau
camp,” said Alex Magaji, a farmer in the small village of Dabuli in Southern Borno.
Their Fight Good For Us – Civilian JTF
Leaders of the Borno Youths Vigilante, popularly known as Civilian
JTF, said the infighting by the Boko Haram was probably the best news
coming out of the violent group in recent times. Barrister Jibrin Gunda,
the legal adviser of the vigilantes in Borno State, said the emergence
of crack in any group signified the end of it, no matter how strong such
group was.
“We welcome the development and we pray they would continue
fighting and fragmenting. However, what I want to tell you is that none
of them is better; we are looking for all of them.
“The only ones that we would spare are those who repent, and
they were the ones that would be taken as prisoners of war by the
Nigerian Army.
“If you look at recent events, our people, like the ones from
Konduga and Mafa, are gradually leaving the IDP camps. All these
positive things are happening because of the gradual return of peace.
The Borno State government is working hard to take all the people back
to their homes, and we, as vigilantes, welcome this feat,” Gunda said.
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