Boko Haram’s Nemesis: A Post-Mortem of Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) Leader, Abu Musab al-Barnawi

Boko Haram’s Nemesis: A Post-Mortem of Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) Leader, Abu Musab al-Barnawi

In September, Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP)’s leader, Abu Musab al-Barnawi, was reported killed (saharareporters.com, September 15). Although details remain unclear, his death either came at the hands of rivals in Boko Haram commanded by Bakura, who operated around Lake Chad, or possibly by al-Barnawi’s internal rivals in ISWAP. The Nigerian military has acknowledged al-Barnawi’s death, but has claimed no involvement (premiumtimesng.com, October 14).

Al-Barnawi’s death at the hands of Bakura would not be surprising considering al-Barnawi’s hostility to Boko Haram. In August 2016, for example, Islamic State (IS) named al-Barnawi as ISWAP’s leader, which meant original Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau was unceremoniously expelled from ISWAP (al-Naba, August 3, 2016). Shekau later resurrected Boko Haram, which had been dormant while Shekau led ISWAP, and commanded Boko Haram from his Sambisa, Borno State base. Three years later, in 2019, Bakura began commanding fighters loyal to Shekau around Lake Chad (Terrorism Monitor, January 28).

Al-Barnawi was ultimately dethroned by internal rivals in March 2019, who sought to steer ISWAP in a more brutal “Shekau-like” direction when it came to killing vigilantes loyal to the Nigerian army, kidnapping and executing aid workers, and raiding Christian villages (punchng.com, March 5, 2019). The commanders who overthrew al-Barnawi, however, like al-Barnawi himself, still opposed Shekau. In fact, some of al-Barnawi’s greatest levels of brutality were seen in ISWAP’s confrontations with Shekau’s loyalists in the weeks after August 2016, which led to more killings of Shekau’s loyalists  than ISWAP fighters in their battles (al-Haqaiq, June 2018).

The face of al-Barnawi has never been exposed. He first appeared veiled in a Boko Haram video interview in January 2015, which was coordinated with IS, posted on a Twitter account that IS set up with Boko Haram, and presaged Boko Haram’s impending pledge to IS by Shekau in March 2015 (Boko Haram was renamed ISWAP after Shekau’s pledge) (al-Urwa al-Wutqha, January 27, 2015). Al-Barnawi’s other major appearance was not visual, but through a book that he wrote in June 2018 that detailed a litany of Shekau’s abuses of power, including killing sub-commanders, committing mass executions of youths who did not join the jihad, and rejecting theological advice from IS (al-Haqaiq, June 2018). Thus, al-Barnawi’s somewhat secretive life, at least to an outsider, is matched by a similar level of mystery surrounding his reported death.

Al-Barnawi’s Legacy of Leniency

Part of al-Barnawi’s legacy will be his reputation of leniency towards civilians and not labeling any Muslim an ‘infidel’ just because they did not wage jihad, unlike Shekau (issafrica.com, September 22, 2016). In addition, when more than 100 Muslim schoolgirls were kidnapped from Dapchi, Yobe State in February 2018, the girls reported that they were brought to al-Barnawi’s base near Lake Chad and that he promised to not harm them. This proved true when they were returned to their homes weeks later through an undisclosed deal between ISWAP and the Nigerian government (the lone Christian schoolgirl, however, remained “enslaved” by ISWAP) (theguardian.com, March 30, 2018). Al-Barnawi’s lenient treatment of young schoolgirls can be compared with both ISWAP’s execution by al-Barnawi’s internal rivals of two young Muslim female aid workers, weeks before al-Barnawi was overthrown by those adversaries in March 2019, as well as Shekau’s bombastic claims of “enslaving” the more than 200 abducted Chibok schoolgirls in 2014, including several dozen Muslim schoolgirls among them (saharareporters.com, April 9, 2018; Youtube, May 5, 2014).

Despite that, al-Barnawi was seemingly more moderate than Shekau and his internal rivals in ISWAP. By the end of his life, he showed little sympathy towards al-Qaeda, which is usually seen as a relatively more moderate group than IS. Although al-Barnawi managed a few words of praise for al-Qaeda’s small Nigerian affiliate, Ansaru, in his book, al-Barnawi also noted that he only welcomed Ansaru members into ISWAP after they defected from that group (al-Haqaiq, June 2018). Further, in May, when al-Barnawi regained leadership of ISWAP from his internal rivals, he released a series of audios to condemn Shekau in advance of the offensive that led to the events of ISWAP’s near-capture of Shekau and Shekau’s suicide by self-detonating a bomb. In those audios, al-Barnawi condemned al-Qaeda and Shekau’s initial outreach to al-Qaeda liaisons in 2010 (eeradicalization.com, August 30).

While ISWAP has released an audio acknowledging al-Barnawi’s passing, IS itself has not commented on his death (Telegram, September 13). Moreover, while al-Barnawi had claimed that IS had reinstated him as ISWAP leader in May and ordered him to launch the offensive that led to Shekau’s death, IS only explicitly mentioned al-Barnawi in August 2016 when it first named him as ISWAP leader (the January 2015 video featuring al-Barnawi was still two  months before Boko Haram became ISWAP) (Telegram, May 18). One reason why IS may not honor al-Barnawi in passing is that al-Barnawi was not well known among global jihadists, nor would IS want to mention circumstances surrounding al-Barnawi’s death, such as the internal turmoil in ISWAP causing his death or the late Shekau’s loyalists gaining retribution against al-Barnawi for his role in Shekau’s demise.

The End of An Era

More locally, the death of al-Barnawi coming only months after Shekau’s death marks an end of an era. Al-Barnawi’s father, Muhammed Yusuf, had led Boko Haram from 2004 until his death in 2009 and cultivated Shekau as his deputy. In addition to Yusuf’s third-in-command and al-Barnawi’s ally, Mamman Nur, being executed by ISWAP internal rivals in September 2018, the three most important Nigerian jihadists with ties to the movement’s foundational leader, Yusuf, are now deceased: Shekau, al-Barnawi, and Nur himself (saharareporters.com, September 14, 2018).

This means that ISWAP and Boko Haram are both increasingly distanced from the movement’s origins, and Yusuf himself rarely is mentioned by either group in their videos or literature. ISWAP and Boko Haram are also increasingly distanced from any association with Nigeria itself. This contrasts with Yusuf, Shekau, Nur, and, to some extent, the younger al-Barnawi, who all were raised in Nigeria and interacted with Nigeria’s government, religious scholars and society before waging jihad against them from 2009 onwards. ISWAP and Boko Haram now only encounter the Nigerian army, but little else of “Nigeria.” This makes either group’s ability to reconcile with the Nigerian government and reenter Nigerian society all the more unlikely.