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Nigeria’s Boko Haram Releases New Video Denying Surrender
[ENGLISH.ALMANAR.LB]Boko Haram... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... released a new video Friday denying any suggestion it might surrender, just over a week after shadowy leader Abubakar Shekau appeared in a rare message looking dejected and frail. Shekau, unseen on camera for more than a year, released an unverified video late last month saying his time in charge of the Nigerian 'jihadist' group may be coming to an end. If the video indeed depicts Shekau, he appears thin and listless, delivering his message without his trademark fiery ...a single two-syllable word carrying connotations of both incoherence and viciousness. A fiery delivery implies an audience of rubes and yokels, preferably forming up into a mob... rhetoric. It prompted speculation from the army that the murderous Moslem group was on the verge of collapse in the face of a sustained military counter-insurgency. However, there is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened... in Friday's message, Boko Haram maintained it was a potent fighting force, with men holding AK-47s posing in front of Toyota Hilux pick-up trucks and a lorry mounted with a military cannon. "You should know that there is no truce, there is no negotiations, there is no surrender," an unidentified masked man in camouflage said in a prepared script in Hausa, the dominant language in the north, in the video posted on YouTube. "This war between us will not stop." The video, of markedly better quality than Shekau's and including Arabic subtitles, featured nine masked Boko Haram fighters standing on sandy ground in an undisclosed desert location. It is unclear if the masked people in the video include the Boko Haram leader. Shekau was still the head of the "West African wing", said the masked speaker, likening Boko Haram to the murderous Moslem insurgencies in Iraq, Libya and Syria. In March 2015, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to ISIL group, another deadly terror organization. But there were few signs that Boko Haram -- now styled as ISIL in West Africa Province (ISWAP) -- has drawn benefits from the partnership. Since then Nigeria's army has won back swathes of territory from the hard boys, liberating thousands of people who had been living under Boko Haram control. The video appears to confirm collaboration between Boko Haram and the ISIL group, Africa security specialist Ryan Cummings told AFP. "The production quality bears the hallmarks of the ISIL's media wing," Cummings said, explaining that it is expected that Shekau shun the limelight. "A hallmark of the group and its affiliates is that you very seldom see leaders," Cummings said. The analyst said it still remains to be seen what support, if any, the ISIL group is offering to Boko Haram Death Eaters on the ground. "What we do know is that there has been a pledge of allegiance and we are seeing Boko Haram communiqués being spread around cyberspace by Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... accounts," Cummings said. "Whether that has been translated into any operational links in the field, I don't think there's enough verifiable evidence to suggest that." Posted by: Fred 2016-04-02 |
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