Boko Haram and ISIS

ISIS accepts Boko
Haram's plea of allegiance...
According to AFP , ISIS has now accepted the
allegiance of Boko Haram.
The Islamic State group has welcomed a
pledge of allegiance to it made by the
Nigerian jihadist organisation Boko Haram,
according to an audiotape Thursday
purportedly from its spokesman.
"We announce to you to the good news of
the expansion of the caliphate to West Africa
because the caliph... has accepted the
allegiance of our brothers of the Sunni group
for preaching and the jihad," IS spokesman
Mohammed al-Adnani said in the message,
using the Arabic name for Boko Haram.
Itself a radical Sunni Muslim movement, IS has
seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria and
declared an Islamic "caliphate" there, and has
also drawn expressions of allegiance from
jihadists in Egypt and Libya.
On Saturday, an audiotape attributed to Boko
Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said "we
announce our allegiance to the Caliph of the
Muslims, Ibrahim ibn Awad ibn Ibrahim al-
Husseini al-Qurashi," referring to IS leader Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Shekau has previously mentioned Baghdadi in
video messages yet stopped short of pledging
formal allegiance.
But there have been increasing signs that the
Nigerian militants, whose six-year insurgency has
claimed more than 13,000 lives and left 1.5
million people homeless, have been seeking a
closer tie-up.
IS spokesman Adnani urged Muslims to join
militants in West Africa and insisted that the
caliphate was growing.
"Our caliphate is resisting and it is advancing in
the right direction. We are fighting the Crusaders
and the rafidah (Shiites) and day by day the
Islamic State is becoming strong," he said.
He insisted that the jihadist group is "sure of its
victory" regardless of the challenges it is facing.
For months, IS has been targeted with air strikes
from a coalition led by the United States and
suffered territorial setbacks in Syria and Iraq.
And Iraqi government forces have closed on the
city of Tikrit this week in a bid to retake it from
the group.