Istanbul--The United States should help Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki fend off the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria given the threats the group poses to American allies and interests, but…

In September 2018, there were reports that Nur was murdered by his own faction because he was too “soft”, that he misappropriated ransom money, and even that he might have been open to a dialogue with the Nigerian government. In late February 2018, ISWA reportedly replaced al-Barnawi with Abu Abdullah Ibn Umar al-Barnawi.

The latest news from northeastern Nigeria is that the Nigerian army will erect fortresses around the region’s larger towns to prevent Boko Haram raids and allow farmers to tend their fields in safety. The military has now entered a counterinsurgency phase of the conflict.

Abdulbasit Kassim, leading Boko Haram scholar, recently discovered a thirty-eight-minute recording of a purported Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) communique. I translated it from the original Kanuri. It provides a particular version and explanation of ISWA's immediate history, and sheds light on why the group executed Mamman Nur, one of the Boko Haram’s founding fathers and an influential ideologue, its internal decision-making, and ISWA’s relationship with the Islamic State (IS). It is not clear, however, the extent to which what is described in the audio is true to what actually happened. 

Niger officials have announced that Boko Haram kidnapped eighteen girls from two villages, Blaharde and Bague, on November 24. The Blaharde and Bague kidnapping followed the November 22 killing of seven employees of the French drilling company Foraco at the village of Toumour, Niger.