...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
jihadists in southwestern Niger have killed seven leaders of the Tuareg ethnic group in less than three months, as part of a strategy to create a political void in the region, officials said Tuesday.
Three traditional Tuareg chiefs and four senior Tuareg officials have been killed since late April by the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other...
, Niger, and Mali....
(ISGS) in the volatile region of Niger on the Mali border, they said.
Arrisal Amdagh, a Tuareg chief in the rural district of Inates, was rubbed out at his home in April, and his son Almoubacher Ag Alamjadi, who succeeded him, was killed on Monday, a Nigerien security source said.
Their deaths were confirmed to AFP by Defense Minister Kalla Moutari on Tuesday.
Four senior members of the tribe were killed by a roadside kaboom as they were heading to the father's funeral, their relatives said last month.
In a separate incident in June, a traditional Tuareg leader in Bankilare district was kidnapped and killed, a local source said.
Niger, one of the world's poorest countries, lies in the heart of the fragile Sahel region
... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas...
, which is battling an Islamist insurgency.
Insurgent groups are active in the west and north of the country, spilling over from a long-running campaign in Mali, while Nigeria's 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...is present in the country's southeast.
"The ISGS strategy is to kill traditional chiefs in the border areas," a security source told AFP.
"It's a way of voiding the area of an effective state presence, enabling you to move in and impose your law."
On July 1, 18 Nigerien soldiers were killed when jihadists struck an army camp at Inates, according to the defense ministry.
Niger is part of the so-called G5 Sahel group of five nations set up to manage a coordinated response to the jihadist insurgency in the impoverished region.