OSINT SUMMARY
Supremacy battle between jihadist groups seems to be taking another turn. Nigeria’s Boko Haram which pledged allegiance to ISIS and now is calling on dwindling Somali’s Al Shabaab to abandon Al Qaeda and join the ISIS camp.
This is not the first time the Al Qaeda branch in Somalia has been urged by other militants group to leave their faction and instead pledge bayat (oath of allegiance) to the leader of Islamic State group.
Islamic State which is an offshoot of Al Qaeda declared itself as the ‘caliphate’ angering other jihadist groups. Al Qaeda terrorist group under the leadership of Ayman al-Zawahiri and Islamic State led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi are rivals for jihadi recruits.
On Wednesday 14th October 2015 a video posted on Twitter is calling for Al Shabaab fighters to stay united meaning there maybe rifts. In the video the speaker acknowledges the dwindling number of Al Shabaab fighters in Somalia.
The appeal from unidentified Boko Haram fighter can be viewed as a wider strategy of courting Al Shabaab militants to the ISIS fold. In less than two weeks similar pledges came from militant extremists from Syria, Iraq, Sinai and Yemen.
Al Qaeda branch in Somalia has suffered significant blows from a Multinational African Union Force. The militant outfit has lost hundreds of it fighters and has been losing ground across Somalia.
Al Qaeda dynamism seem to be slowly fading as compared to ISIS and Nigeria’s jihadist group, Boko Haram which already joined Islamic State group fighting in Iraq and Syria is seen wooing the Al-Qaeda linked Al-Shabaab group to follow suit by joining ISIS renewing the previous calls urging the group to join the new Jihadist group.
