Nigerian Military Rescue 150 More Women And Girls From Boko Haram Enclave

Up to 150 more women and children have been rescued from Boko Haram extremists in the remote Sambisa Forest, Nigeria’s military said – amid reports that some of the women fought their rescuers fiercely.

Kenyan President SacksSecurity Minister After Latest Al-Shabaab Attack

President Uhuru Kenyatta

Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, has fired his security minister and accepted the resignation of his police chief, hours after Somali-based al- Shabaab militants killed 36 quarry workers in the north of the country.

Nigeria's Minister of Defence Bemoans 'Foreign Fighters' Phenomenon To Boko Haram, Global Terrorism

Minister of Defence, Lt-Gen. Aliyu Gusau (rtd.)

The Minister of Defence, Lt-Gen. Aliyu Gusau (rtd), has raised the alarm over the growing influence of foreign fighters in the ranks of Boko Haram group as well as other similar groups all over the world, and called for a united effort to tackle the menace.

Boko Haram Kill Scores In Borno Market

Mainok market, 56 kilometres from Maiduguri, the Borno State capital came under Boko Haram attack on Thursday, leaving scores of buyers and sellers dead.

DHQ Refutes Boko Haram's Claim of Gwoza Being Part of Its 'Islamic Caliphate', Says Sect’s Claim 'Empty'

The Defence Headquarters on Sunday dismissed as empty, claims by the leader of the Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau that the sect had seized Gwoza from the Nigerian government.

In a statement forwarded to our Correspondent, Defence spokesman, Major Gen. Chris Olukolade insisted that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country remained intact.

The statement said: “The claim is empty. The sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Nigerian state is still intact. Any group of terrorists laying claim to any portion of the country will not be allowed to get away with that expression of delusion and crime.
“Appropriate military operations to secure that area from the activities of the bandits are still ongoing”

Source:
The Nation

Boko Haram On The Brink Of Creating A Caliphate In Northern Nigeria

Daring advances by Boko Haram suggests the Islamic Sect may be on the brink of achieving its goal of creating an Islamic Caliphate in northern Nigeria. Analysts are however of the view that comparisons to the Iraq crisis are premature and the military can reverse the group’s gains.

The conflict in the Islamists’ northeastern stronghold remains in flux even as witnesses, security sources and experts report that the insurgents have seized several areas and towns since April.

Precisely mapping the areas captured by the extremists— who are blamed for more than 10,000 deaths since their uprising began in 2009 — is near impossible.

The northeast, under a state of emergency since May last 2013, has poor mobile phone coverage, travel is
dangerous and the military has restricted the flow of information.

The United Nations has confirmed reports that the towns of Damboa and Gwoza in Borno State were under
rebel control earlier this month, although Damboa may have since been retaken.
On Thursday, witnesses and an official in Buni Yadi in neighbouring Yobe state said that town had also been seized.

Ryan Cummings, chief Africa analyst at the South Africa-based crisis management group Red 24, described Boko Haram’s shift from guerrilla-style hit-and-run tactics as “a significant evolution” and predicted the trend would continue.

Virginia Comolli of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London added that the group was “in control” of northern Borno, which is consistent with residents’ accounts.
She said that the group had captured and held territory before but “now we are looking at a more extended area”.
“They have a real shot of achieving their goal” of creating a strict Islamic state in the north, she added.

Military Weakness -
While the rebels have grown stronger, secured powerful new weapons and refreshed their ranks with new conscripts, military failures are largely to blame for the worsening crisis, multiple sources said.
“For whatever reason, our soldiers, who are capable of defeating Boko Haram terrorists, were starved of the
necessary weapons,” said a senior security source in Borno’s capital Maiduguri.
He noted that Boko Haram had taken over larges swathes of northern Borno before May last year.

When the state of emergency was declared, the military launched a massive offensive which temporarily flushed the rebels from their strongholds. But said the security source, top brass failed to sustain the pressure.

Boko Haram “would have been completely crushed had the tempo of the offensive been sustained”, he told AFP.
“I assure you it will not take much effort to crush them if provided with the needed weapons,” he added.
Lack of arms for troops has become a flashpoint issue, and soldiers this week refused to deploy to Gwoza without better weapons in an apparent mutiny.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and top economy and some observers have put the defence budget at roughly $6 billion (4.5 billion euros) per year.
If troops are chronically ill-equipped, corruption and inefficiency are the likely causes, rather than a lack of
resources, experts say.

Most agree that force alone cannot end the five-year conflict and must be coupled with major economic
development in the desperately poor northeast.

Not ‘Islamic State’ -
In a July video, Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau voiced support for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of
the Islamic State (IS) extremists who have captured parts of Iraq and Syria and claimed the grisly execution
of US journalist James Foley.
The mention of Baghdadi was unusual for Shekau, who in videos often appears completely detached from current events.

Jacob Zenn, an analyst at the US-based Jamestown Foundation, said there were similarities between IS and Boko Haram, notably their shocking levels of brutality.
Boko Haram has among other crimes massacred thousands of defenceless civilians, opened fire on students sleeping in their dorms, kidnapped hundreds of children, including more than 200 schoolgirls from the
town of Chibok in April.

But while the United States has described IS as “beyond anything” it has seen in terms of funding, weaponry and strategic sophistication, Boko Haram is largely made up of poor, uneducated youths with almost no tactical training. Though the group is thought to have ties to outside jihadi groups but the extent of those links is not clear.

Boko Haram “has not reached that level of sophistication”, Comolli told AFP, referring to IS, but said Shekau’s mention of Baghdadi was noteworthy.
Boko Haram, she said, is “watching what is going on”.

Vanguard Newspaper