For those that dont know, Ansaru, is a breakaway militant group from Boko Haram. They were responsible for
kidnapping seven foreign construction workers in Bauch recently. Ansaru has explained why the
group abduct foreign hostages, saying it was meant to send a message to the
western powers on the kind of advice they give to Nigerian leaders.
A young member of the group who called himself Mujahi Abu
Nasir while speaking on the group’s activities also said their sympathizers are
everywhere in Nigeria but that the group avoid the killing of fellow Nigerians.
Having split off from Boko Haram - the dominant Nigerian
extremist group responsible for weekly shootings and bombings — this new group,
Ansaru, said it eschews the killing of fellow Nigerians.
The West, which has often regarded the Islamist uprising
as a Nigerian domestic issue, has been explicitly put on notice by Ansaru,
adding an international dynamic to a conflict that has already cost more than
3,000 lives.
Ansaru is believed to be responsible for the December
kidnapping of a French engineer, who is still missing, and for the abduction of
an Italian and a Briton, both construction workers, who were later killed by
their captors as a rescue attempt began last year.
It is also likely that the group was involved in the
February kidnapping of a French family on the Cameroon-Nigeria border. They
were released on Friday, under conditions that are unclear, as well as the
kidnapping of a German engineer in Kano killed during a rescue effort last
year.
“Any white man who is working with them” — meaning
“Zionists,” — “we can kidnap them, everywhere,” said Mujahid Abu Nasir.
He had slipped into Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, with a
bodyguard, travelling hundreds of miles from Ansaru’s secret headquarters in
the north.
He said he had come under the authorization of Ansaru’s
leader, Khalid al-Barnawi, who the United States said has close ties to Al
Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and has designated a global terrorist.
For three hours, with chilling precision, Abu Nasir, in a
neatly pressed shirt and polished shoes, laid out Ansaru’s philosophy, after
reciting a verse from the Koran promising “hell fire” for nonbelievers saying
“opponents would be killed; Al Qaeda sympathizers were everywhere in Nigeria;
and Westerners would be kidnapped”.
He said Ansaru had been motivated by Al Qaeda itself,
trained by its affiliate in the region — Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb — and
was now following in both their footsteps.
Before speaking or touching anything, Abu Nasir carefully
put on black gloves and examined a reporter’s pen to make sure there was no
camera hidden in it.
He said he was the son of a Nigerian aristocrat, and he
spoke Arabic, which he said he had perfected at a university in Khartoum,
Sudan. He understood English perfectly but would not speak it, on principle.
“By taking these hostages, we are sending a message that
they should be careful about giving bad advice to our leaders,” he said of
Nigeria’s government, which he called a “puppet” of the West.
“They are as dangerous as Al Qaeda,” said Maikaramba
Sadiq of Nigeria’s Civil Liberties Organization. “They have the same training
as Al Qaeda. They have the same approach as Al Qaeda.”
Still, the two militant groups, Ansaru and Boko Haram,
retain ties. “They are with us now,” Abu Nasir said. “Whenever we hear of
oppression, we do operations together.”
At the slightest hint of rescue, mistaken or otherwise,
Ansaru appears ready to kill its hostages.
Abu Nasir spoke of his early recruitment by Al Qaeda,
rigorous training in Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s desert camps, his
leaders’ contacts with Osama bin Laden and the current leader of Al Qaeda,
Ayman al-Zawahri, and disagreements with Boko Haram’s indiscriminate methods.
He said he had attended an Islamic college in the
northern metropolis of Kano, which has since become a hotbed of Boko Haram
radicalism. Then, “for the zeal of seeking knowledge,” he went to Khartoum, he
said, where it was “Al Qaeda propagators who initiated me into the clique.”
The recruiters took him to the southern deserts of
Algeria and then to Mauritania for a rigorous training course by Al Qaeda in
the Islamic Maghreb. For six months, he said, he trained directly under Abu
Zeid. Of five who came with him from Sudan, he said, two died during training.
“Everything the security forces get, we get double that,”
he said of Ansaru’s training regimen.
Returning to Nigeria in 2008, Abu Nasir said, he went
underground in Lagos. “Thousands” are like him, he said, “some who work in
government, some businessmen, some teachers.”
“Any leader who does not listen to the warnings of his
people, he is going to pay a heavy price,” Abu Nasir said. “We are not going to
take one step back.”
