Country Reports on Terrorism 2016 - Foreign Terrorist Organizations: Boko Haram (BH)

aka Nigerian Taliban; Jama'atu Ahlus-Sunnah Lidda'Awati Wal Jihad; Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad; People Committed to the Prophet's Teachings for Propagation and Jihad; Sunni Group for Preaching and Jihad

Description: Nigeria-based Boko Haram (BH) was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on November 14, 2013. The group is responsible for numerous attacks in northern and northeastern Nigeria, and the Lake Chad Basin in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger that have killed thousands of people since its reemergence in 2009.

In March 2015, BH pledged allegiance to ISIS in an audiotape message; ISIS accepted the group's pledge and the group began calling itself ISIS-West Africa. In August 2016, ISIS announced that Abu Musab al-Barnawi was to replace Abubakar Shekau as the new leader of the group. Shekau continues to maintain a group of followers concentrated in the Sambisa Forest; in a recent video, Shekau referred to his faction as Jama'atu ahlus-sunnah lidda await wal jihad (Boko Haram). The Government of Nigeria routinely calls both Boko Haram.

Activities: BH was responsible for the August 26, 2011 bomb attack on the UN building in Abuja that killed at least 21 people and wounded dozens more. The group was also responsible for a series of bomb attacks in 2012 in Kano, Nigeria.

Boko Haram has increasingly crossed Nigerian borders to evade pressure and conduct operations. In February 2013, BH claimed responsibility for kidnapping seven French tourists in the Far North of Cameroon. Security forces from Chad and Niger also reportedly participated in skirmishes against suspected BH members along Nigeria's borders. In 2013, the group also kidnapped eight French citizens in northern Cameroon and obtained ransom payments for their release.

In 2014, BH killed approximately 5,000 Nigerian civilians in various attacks. The kidnapping of 276 female students from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State, brought global attention to Boko Haram's activities and highlighted its deliberate targeting of non-combatants, including children. In 2015, the group continued to abduct women and girls in the northern region of Nigeria, some of whom it later subjected to domestic servitude, other forms of forced labor, and sexual servitude through forced marriages to its members. (For further information, refer to the Trafficking in Persons Report 2016, http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2016/index.htm.)

Between January 3 and 7, 2015, BH carried out a massacre in Baga, Borno State; reported casualties ranged from 150 to more than 2,000 killed, injured, or disappeared. The January 2015 attacks and other BH operations in surrounding smaller villages in 2015 displaced an estimated 35,000 people and allowed BH to gain control of Borno State. In February, BH expanded into Cameroon with an attack on the northern town of Fotokol, where it murdered residents inside their homes and in a mosque. On April 6, BH militants disguised as Islamic preachers killed at least 24 people and wounded several others in an attack near a mosque in Borno State; the attackers gathered people in the village of Kwajafa, offering to preach Islam, then opened fire. In mid-October, BH conducted a coordinated attack on the Baga Sola market and a refugee camp in N'Djamena, Chad; 33 people were killed and 51 others wounded. On November 18, two young female suicide bombers detonated explosives just before afternoon prayers in Kano, killing 15.

BH continued its operational tempo through 2015 and into early 2016 under the name ISIS-West Africa, with January operations in Cameroon that killed 16 people. In February, the group resumed attacks in Nigeria, killing 30 people on February 13 in a spate of attacks in Borno State that included forcing worshipers into a mosque and killing them. On April 14, the group released a video of select teenage girls abducted during the Chibok incident as a "proof of life." BH released 21 Chibok schoolgirls to Nigerian authorities in exchange for the release of selected BH members in October; it was the first mass release of Chibok hostages since the 2014 abductions.

Strength: Membership is estimated to be several thousand fighters.

Location/Area of Operation: Northeastern Nigeria, northern Cameroon, southeast Niger, and areas of Chad along the border with Nigeria.

Funding and External Aid: BH largely self-finances through criminal activities such as looting, extortion, kidnapping-for-ransom, and bank robberies.