On Thursday the AFP news agency acquired a video purporting to show Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, taunting the Nigerian military, speaking in Arabic and the local Hausa language, all while dressed “in combat fatigues and black rubber boots firing an anti-aircraft gun into the air.”

This video came as a surprise to many of those following the group, as the Nigerian military reported it had killed Shekau in actions last week. The video further mocked this claim, with the man in the video stating “Here I am, alive. I will only die the day Allah takes my breath.”

Shekau being the man in the video has some prominent support from those outside of the Nigerian military. Even in the days immediately following the claims of Shekau’s death, several security analysts, along with the United States, officially questioned the claim.

A Nigerian reporter, who according to BBC has “good contacts within Boko Haram” tweeted after the alleged operation that he was told “on authority that Shekau is well and alive.”

The military, for its part, claims that the person in the video is not the real Shekau, simply calling the man in the video “the impostor. The military, however, has also stated that it is attempting to verify the video’s authenticity, according to News24.

Any information on military successes against the militant group is complicated by a lack of credibility in Nigerian military reports. In addition to the immediate doubts cast by international observers on Shekau’s death, the military has also made several much maligned claims with regards to Boko Haram in recent months.

Shekua’s Death

To start, the country’s military has “repeatedly rejected claims about Boko Haram taking over towns and villages, despite multiple testimonies from fleeing residents,” according to the AFP.

As of September 19, the Council on Foreign Relations, relying on the reports of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops tuned into networks of local parishes, claimed 25 towns in the Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states were under Boko Haram control.

This included Bama, one of the largest cities in the state of Borno, where “the government and Boko Haram both claim control” but, similar to AFP reports, “the exodus of people from the city indicates that the Islamists have the upper hand.”

Particularly horrific stories have emerged from the city, with one former resident telling the AFP that residents “just live like slaves.” According to the woman, Hajjo Muhammad, “There is no food in Bama and residents have to go to the palace to beg the emir for grains every few days.”

She also said they were forced to beg for medicine and must receive permission from the militant group in order to get water from the river.

The horrors emerging in Bama illustrate a fundamental change in the threat posed by Boko Haram. While previously the militant group had preferred more criminal activity such as kidnapping and attacking police stations and other government targets, they are increasingly acting like an occupying military, taking and holding towns. This is perhaps a product of the successes in Iraq and Syria of the Islamic State or ISIS.

Caliphate on Earth

While the two groups share an ideological devotion to a Caliphate on Earth, guided by Sharia or Islamic Law, in more than a decade of Boko Haram’s existence, the group never declared that one existed nor that Shekau was its Caliph.

On June 29, the first day of Ramadan, ISIS’ leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared such a Caliphate existed in the Middle East and Northern Africa and he was its Caliph, Boko Haram rapidly responded.

First, Shekau declared support for the newly minted Caliphate, calling ISIS his “brethren” in a video given to the AFP. Then, at the beginning of September, Shekau released a video declaring an Islamic Caliphate in Northeastern Nigeria, of which he was the Caliph.

This timing was not lost on analysts, with John Campbell, a former US ambassador to Nigeria and current Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, telling NBC News that “Shekau likes to copy and mimic some aspects of ISIS and he was one of the few jihadi leaders who welcomed ISIS’s declaration of a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.”

It has now been five and a half months since Boko Haram burst onto the world stage by kidnapping nearly 300 schoolgirls from a school in Chibok in Northeast Nigeria. The world responded with outrage and a hashtag, #BringBackOurGirls.

Unfortunately, just as quickly as the group burst into the international community’s collective consciousness, it was mostly forgotten, and over the last five and a half months none of the girls has been recovered and Boko Haram has continued to torment Northeast Nigeria, along with neighboring countries.

While the Nigerian military has claimed to have some success battling the group, there is significant doubt among international analysts. While the world’s attention turned elsewhere, the group has begun to act more as an occupying force than a terrorist organization. Unless more is done, the group will continue to cause untold suffering to many more than just those Chibok schoolgirls.

 

Andrew Friedman is a human rights attorney and consultant who works and writes on legal reform and constitutional law with an emphasis on Africa. He can be reached via email at afriedm2@gmail.com or via twitter @AndrewBFriedman.