[Publisher's note: In debates surrounding the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram, a group of academics called into question Jacob Zenn's credibility. Such charges are serious and Jacob Zenn has the right to defend himself and reply. I have given him the space to publish his detailed response to the critics. Please note that guest posts on my site are generally welcome. Feel free to contact me if you wish to publish something on my site- Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi].
In discussions involving politics and conflict, the elements of sound research, coherent writing, and a constructive exchange of opinions and perspectives are all crucial. Below, Boko Haram specialist Jacob Zenn responds in full to an attempted critique on his recent article "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings" in a special issue of the journal Perspectives on Terrorism in December 2017. [1] Co-written by five academics in April 2018, the attempted critique defied the boundaries of good scholarship both in terms of academic rigor and academic exchange. [2] Zenn's shorter response to their critique will appear in the June 2018 issue of Perspectives on Terrorism, while this post offers Zenn's larger point-for-point rejoinder.
The Folly of Crowds: Jacob Zenn Rebuts Adam Higazi, Brandon Kendhammer, Kyari Mohammed, Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, and Alex Thurston [3]
What matters is the effort the critic puts into trying to prevent others from reading the book, or, more generally in life, it is the effort in badmouthing someone that matters, not so much what is said. So if you really want people to read a book, tell them it is "overrated," with a sense of outrage (and use the attribute "underrated" for the opposite effect).... So the same hidden antifragilities apply to attacks on our ideas and persons: we fear them and dislike negative publicity, but smear campaigns, if you can survive them, help enormously.... There is a visible selection bias: why did he attack you instead of someone else, one of the millions of persons deserving but not worthy of attack? It is his energy in attacking or badmouthing that will, antifragile style, put you on the map. – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder" [4]
Before this whole thing goes down, you should know one thing about me.... I don't like bullies.
– Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, "Central Intelligence" [5]
On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida with millions of people watching on live television. NASA even invited a schoolteacher to travel to space with the crew so she could show children around the country that "no dream was beyond reach." [6] Many children watched the space shuttle blast off from classrooms across America. Seventy-three seconds after takeoff, however, Challenger disintegrated into a fiery explosion and plunged into the Atlantic Ocean. Afterwards, people asked, "how could such an acknowledged group of expert engineers be so confident about the success of Challenger's mission yet so wrong at the same time?" A critical answer to this question is groupthink. [7] Rather than "test every decision they faced" against adversaries, a group of engineers' "striving for unanimity" overrode their ability to consider alternative courses of action: they stereotyped an "out-group" that questioned Challenger's readiness for flight, pressured dissenters who argued for postponement, and believed in their inherent morality. [8]
In the case at hand, I have forced five academics to test their conclusions at every step of the way. [9] All of these disagreements between us can—should—be settled the way good scholars interested in pursuit of truth settle their disputes: through examination of evidence and methods that help to understand the strengths and weaknesses of competing claims, and thus move us closer to grasping the big picture.
Instead of pursuing such a path, the five academics decided to try to undermine my reputation, first by attacking me sub rosa as an "out-group" member, and then by public accusations that I am a fraud. Like Challenger's engineers, they would rather tune me out than – in the spirit of scholarly debate and exchange – continue to test their explanations against mine. The five academics should hold themselves to higher standards than power plays, the in-group/out-group denominations that they seem to favor (if their article and other actions are any indication) and, indeed, pettiness.
The five academics framed their article as preserving the integrity of the field from someone who sources poorly, knows little, and has apparently deceived many people over the years. They probably believe what they are saying. But there is a different way to perceive this dispute that is more compelling: the more accurate frame is that these five academics are "victims" of groupthink. [10]
As the academics acknowledge, although not with the frankness they should, my line of analysis has aged very well over the years, which is why they say I have become a "key voice with substantial influence." [11] The trajectory I have long suggested Boko Haram would take is the trajectory it did in fact take. Boko Haram's actual trajectory is one that for years these academics wrongly insisted was highly improbable, while launching intensely personal, and likely defamatory, campaigns against me, who better understood where the group was heading.
Indeed, their article was not a sudden bolt from the blue. It was an extension of years of a previous campaign in which some or all of them have taken part. This campaign has included e-mails to my colleagues featuring personal attacks against me, calls to my employers, whispers about me at conferences, and, as I will show, the textbook cheap shot—inflammatory and inaccurate footnotes about me in their articles and books. So, their article wasn't solely about academics with high integrity trying to protect their field from frauds.
The escalation of their campaign coincides with an article I published in Perspectives on Terrorism in December 2017 on al-Qaida's impact on three phases of Boko Haram's history [12] and another article I published in February 2018 in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism about Boko Haram's conquest of territory in Nigeria. [13] Both of these articles directly and in a professional way challenged their long-held arguments about Boko Haram by introducing new evidence and analysis. However, like Challenger's engineers the five academics are "insulating themselves from outside opinions" by launching personal attacks against me instead of rigorously engaging the evidence and opposing arguments. [14]
The line of attack in their article is also highly ironic, as it is incomprehensible how five men with Ph.Ds and academic posts all working together to show I am a fraud could so profoundly misread my work. Especially when their point is that I do not read the relevant sources fairly, one would expect their quotations of my work in their article to be airtight and assiduously fair so as to leave no room for doubt in their accusations. Instead, their chronic selective reading—indeed, misreading—is telling. And I should not be seen as the only target here: their decidedly non-collegial, destructive, and frankly unprofessional approach to dealing with differing interpretations of militant groups would also threaten other scholars whether or not they stand outside the "herd".
It is common knowledge that academia can be prone to internal politics, bullying, gatekeeping, cliquishness, careerism, pressures to conform to prevailing conventional wisdom, and sometimes incestuously favorable citation of the work of powerful scholars and "in-group" members, lest one risk a long, carefully crafted article being rejected in peer review. [15] The tactics these five academics have employed against me may work in a small minority of academic departments. But their approach will ultimately not achieve its desired results. When we are dealing with real life and death issues, where we are trying to properly understand militant groups that kidnap schoolgirls and blow up mosques and churches, whispering campaigns and power plays are not sufficient to erase other scholars with superior track records to the five authors who wrote the attack piece.
In the next section, I will rebut a large sample of 30 of their allegations against me. In the process, I will show how they chronically misrepresent my work and that their allegations are a result of their misreading of my article and corpus of work and their lack of specialization on Boko Haram.
In the subsequent section, "The Glass House", I will show that even if they achieved their desired result and I was eliminated from the field it would still not resolve the problems they seek to address. This is because their work exhibits the same flaws they wrongly allege of mine, including lack of sourcing, bias, speculation, cherry-picking, not evaluating contradictory sources and, on top of that, groupthink. If they want to earn the right to deem whose intellectual product is credible or not, then they will have to first address issues in their own work. [16]
The conclusion will offer a brief – and positive – outlook for the field.
Rebuttal
My Perspectives on Terrorism article from December 2017 was originally submitted as a paper presented for a conference held in Oslo, Norway on September 4-5, 2017 called "Al-Qaida at 30". The conference organizers at Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt, FFI) asked the speakers to write an article about a theme related to al-Qaida. My article was called "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings." [17]
Because many readers are familiar with the debate about al-Qaida's alleged "links" to Boko Haram, which some of these five academics have considered to be "speculative" (in 2015), a "storytelling of a global jihad linked to al-Qaida or Daesh" (in 2016), "marginal" (in 2017), and "perhaps not decisive" (in 2018), I sought to de-mystify these "links" and establish that these five academics' descriptions are incorrect. [18] Rather, I argued al-Qaida (including AQIM and al-Shabab) had a "significant impact" on three phases in Boko Haram's history: its founding in 2002-2003; its launch of jihad in 2009-2010; and its first suicide bombing campaign in 2011-2012. These are among the three most important phases in Boko Haram's history because they represent the beginning of the group; the beginning of the group's mass violence; and the beginning of the group's tactical sophistication and innovation.
Importantly, I did not argue al-Qaida was involved in all significant parts of Boko Haram's history: I argued only that al-Qaida was significantly involved in Boko Haram's founding, launch of jihad and suicide bombings, and less so in other phases and events. [19]
Now I list 30 allegations the five academics made about me or my work in their April 2018 attempted critique in bold and italics and then provide my responses below their allegations.
1. "For us, it is important to respond because we believe crucial perspectives are lost when analysts treat Boko Haram as a mere extension of the global jihadist movement. In particular, analysts may overlook or even downplay local political factors, security force abuses, and the internal logics of insurgencies."
The five academics erect a strawman that is either the result of a deliberate misrepresentation of my work or their careless reading. I never argued Boko Haram/Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) is a "mere" extension of the global jihadist movement: the word "mere" was not used in my article. Boko Haram/ISWAP are indisputably an extension of the global jihadist movement (how a formal "province" of the Islamic State would not be is beyond me). [20]
My article made clear there are two main frames to view Boko Haram, that "neither can be fully correct", and that I find one of the two frames—the "agency perspective"—to be "more effective" than the other frame, which is the "multi-dimensional perspective." I also argued that the "agency perspective" is "underutilised" in analyzing Boko Haram and reiterated in the conclusion that "this article does not argue that external factors and individual agency are the only ways to explain the founding and rise of Boko Haram...." Moreover, an article on al-Qaida's impact on Boko Haram does not negate that various other factors matter. Nor does an article on the role corruption, environmental degradation or ideology has played in Boko Haram mean Boko Haram is "merely" the result of corruption, environmental degradation, or ideology.
As I will show in this article, my corpus of work addresses issues ranging from Boko Haram's trafficking throughout the Lake Chad region; [21] to Boko Haram's responses to Nigeria's State of Emergency offensives in 2013 and 2015 and how the French-led military intervention in Mali in 2013 affected Boko Haram; [22] to Boko Haram members' ethno-linguistic composition; [23] to Boko Haram's threats to target women in 2012 and how it carried out those threats in 2013 and especially with the Chibok kidnapping in 2014; [24] and to Boko Haram's negotiations with Nigerian and Cameroonian government intermediaries for the release of schoolgirls who were kidnapped in Chibok in 2014 and Dapchi in 2018. [25]
Therefore, these five authors' ad hominem attack against me is untrue and also unprofessional where they write "Zenn's complete rejection of these factors [local and regional political, social, and military dynamics in shaping these groups' actions, patterns of recruitment, and strategic goals] in the face of documented evidence, comparable cases, and common sense suggests a fundamental lack of intellectual honesty" (italics added for emphasis). They justified this ad hominem attack by making a false equivalency and comparing my 7,000-word article to a 224-page book on al-Shabab that they say does discuss those factors. [26] A single article should not, however, be expected to address more than one primary theme, which in the case of my article was al-Qaida's impact on three phases in Boko Haram's history. If they were comparing that 224-page book to my entire corpus of work, then they are still misrepresenting my corpus of work which does deal with—and at the very least does not "completely reject"—the factors they say my article does not address, such as "regional political, social, and military dynamics."
Truth be told, their misrepresentation of my body of work and ad hominem attack in their attempted critique suggests a fundamental lack of intellectual honesty on their part. Moreover, on the topic of "completely rejecting" factors that "shape" Boko Haram, there are gaping in holes in work of these five academics. They claim to be "specialists" and yet between the five of them not one article has been written about gender issues when dealing with a group like Boko Haram that has engaged in gender-based violence and employed women as 'suicide' bombers as much as, if not more than, any group in the world.
One point where I agree with the five authors is that Nigerian "security force abuses," such as the mass crackdown on Boko Haram in July 2009 that killed 800 of its followers and its leader, Muhammed Yusuf, involved human rights violations and were a major factor in Boko Haram's launch of the jihad in 2009-2010. But here is one reason why I argue that "security force abuses" are also insufficient to explain Boko Haram's violence in 2010: In 2015 the Nigerian security forces killed en masse around 300 to 400 members of a Shia group—the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN)—and severely injured its leader, Ibrahim al-Zakzaky, whom the military has kept in detention since 2015, while also killing at least two of his sons and injuring his wife. Why has that Shia group not revolted violently? [27]
I argue that unlike Boko Haram in 2009, the IMN is not procuring arms or training from anyone outside of Nigeria (or inside Nigeria) like Boko Haram did with AQIM from 2009-2010. Nor does the IMN espouse an ideology that justifies revenge murders as "jihad" against those in the security forces. (No evidence that I have seen suggests that Iran is providing arms to the IMN.) The IMN has responded and protested angrily in Nigeria, but mostly peacefully, since the initial crackdown on the group in 2015. [28] A mass government crackdown and even killing spree against Boko Haram is insufficient to explain how Boko Haram was able to launch its jihad unless other factors are considered, such as porous borders, ideology, and, as my article argued, the group's outreach to AQIM immediately after that crackdown in July 2009, which is now documented extensively due to the availability of new primary sources on the subject.
Similarly, mass government crackdowns in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and in Andijon, Uzbekistan in 2005 did not lead to insurgencies in China and Uzbekistan because, like the case of the IMN, security force abuses alone do not alone lead to insurgencies unless other factors, such as external support and access to training and arms suppliers are considered. This is why I mention the mass crackdown on Boko Haram in July 2009 in virtually all of my articles but explore other factors to explain Boko Haram's launch of jihad after July 2009, such as Boko Haram's increased outreach to AQIM after July 2009.
It is also worth noting that the five authors write that "any explanation of Boko Haram must fail if it does not deal with Nigeria's legacy of endemic corruption." They therefore argue that my Perspectives on Terrorism article "must fail" because I did not address corruption in that article. In response, I make several arguments.
First, my article in Perspectives on Terrorism was not "an explanation of Boko Haram": it was a much more specific analysis of the impact of al-Qaida on three phases of Boko Haram's history. There was no need to discuss corruption in that context. If their argument is literally that any article that explains something about Boko Haram must also discuss corruption, then they are suggesting that a vast array of academic articles on Boko Haram that do not address corruption all "must fail." Thurston's 2015 article, "Nigeria's Mainstream Salafis between Boko Haram and the State," for example, does not mention "corruption" at all but that does not mean his argument "must fail." [29] Similarly, John O. Voll's article, "Boko Haram: Religion and Violence in the 21st Century," did not mention "corruption" at all but focused on Boko Haram in terms of "religious violence." [30] This also does not mean his argument "must fail."
The article they cite from Transparency International to justify their claim that "any explanation of Boko Haram must fail if it does not deal with Nigeria's legacy of endemic corruption" does not mention urbanization, al-Qaida, porous borders, availability of small arms, low levels of employment and literacy, gender-based violence and other factors that matter when "explaining" Boko Haram. However, that does mean the Transparency International article "must fail." It means that the article was focused specifically on corruption and did not need to discuss a number of other relevant factors in "explaining" that particular aspect of Boko Haram.
Second, I agree with Thurston where he writes:
"Some observers seem to assume that because Nigeria has an infamous and far-reaching problem with corruption, and because Muhammad Yusuf preached against the Nigerian state, that Yusuf must have been preaching against financial corruption. But in the surviving videos and recordings of his preaching, as well as in his 2009 Arabic-language manifesto, Yusuf was not primarily concerned with stolen money. In fact, if allegations of Yusuf's early deal-making with mainstream politicians are true, then he may have been all too willing to overlook—and even benefit from—the entrenched corruption around him." [31]
I disagree with MSNBC, which recently on June 19, 2018 published an article called "What is Boko Haram, the militant group terrorizing Nigeria?" The article said "Boko Haram was founded in 2002 by a charismatic, radical cleric named Mohammed Yusuf. He gained support by speaking out against the rampant corruption and inequality in oil-rich Nigeria" (italics added for emphasis). [32] In a 500-plus page collection of translated Boko Haram sermons and primary source materials in the new book, Boko Haram Reader: Nigerian Preachers to the Islamic State, one can see that Yusuf hardly, if at all, mentioned north-south income disparities in Nigeria, financial corruption, or oil issues in his sermons. [33]
Financial corruption has generally not been a grievance of Boko Haram. Rather alleged moral corruption, such as homosexuality, pre-marital affection, idolizing sports stars, and "worshipping" the Nigerian flag, were social grievances of Boko Haram, according to their sermons dating from 2009 and earlier. A better example of an insurgency in Nigeria that has been related to corruption and economic injustices and mismanagement is the Niger Delta insurgency in the south of the country.
Third, since corruption exists throughout Nigeria, why is there no insurgent campaign against the state in Sokoto, Kwara, Taraba, Benue, Ondo, or other places in Nigeria where there is surely corruption? Boko Haram, which has waged its insurgency primarily in the three northeastern Nigerian states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, has been an anomaly in a country that sees high levels of criminal, gang, ethnic, religious and farmer-herder violence but relatively little insurgent violence. At present Boko Haram is the only significant organized and active insurgency in all of Nigeria (unless the Niger Delta insurgency is currently considered significant and organized and active). Moreover, corruption existed in northeastern Nigeria for decades before 2009, but Boko Haram was only founded in 2002-2003. [34] Why was there no sustained insurgency in northeastern Nigeria in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s? The Maitatsine uprisings of the 1980s in northern Nigeria, which would generally not be classified as an "insurgency", were also not considered to be the result of corruption but rather urbanization, social alienation and religious fanaticism. [35] According to the findings in my Perspectives on Terrorism article, a better explanation than corruption for Boko Haram's founding in 2002-2003 is post-9/11 anti-Western sentiment, the agency of Boko Haram founder Muhammed Ali and his al-Qaida counterparts, the willingness of Nigerian Salafis to tolerate Muhammed Ali's jihadi project, the perceived failure of Nigeria's sharia movement, and probably also Muslim-Christian antagonisms of the 1980s and 1990s in Nigeria.
Where I agree with the five authors about corruption is on its negative effect on the counter-insurgency campaign. As evidence they are wrong when they allege I "completely reject" the issue of corruption, I wrote in an article for African Arguments in 2015 that:
"One of Buhari's main campaign promises was his pledge to end corruption in Nigeria. Under previous administrations, funds for the military were siphoned into the pockets of elites, which led to a hole in funding for procurement of equipment, weapons and training for Nigerian troops. This also led to the demoralization of troops....Waging a counter-insurgency campaign against Boko Haram while also fulfilling his campaign pledges to root out corruption and enhance Nigerian democracy will form the core components of Buhari's legacy. Fortunately for him, fulfilling these two goals on anti-corruption and democracy will also be crucial to his success in providing the military with the resources and narrative it needs to once and for all "crush" Boko Haram and its violent ideology." [36]
The fourth and final reason why I tend not to focus on corruption in my work on Boko Haram is that I view it in a similar way to porous borders: it is a structural issue related to the nature of the Nigerian state that I do not see improving significantly in our lifetimes even if various conferences, workshops, training and accountability programs and consultancies try to address the issue. While Nigerian citizens have agency to hold their leaders to account and Nigerian officials have agency to improve their accountability, the existing corruption in Nigeria is, in my view, too deeply embedded in the country to vastly improve in such a way that an insurgency like Boko Haram would no longer exist due to such improvements. President Muhammadu Buhari, who took office in 2015, for instance, is generally considered to be more serious about anti-corruption than President Goodluck Jonathan was before him. Yet, according to Transparency International, in 2014, 2015 and 2016 Nigeria was ranked 136th in the world in corruption but in 2017 it was ranked 148th (with 1 being the best): Nigeria went slightly downhill since Buhari came into office. [37]
Nigeria's neighbors, such as Benin (85th), Niger (112th), Cameroon (153rd) and Chad (165th), and other West African countries more generally are mostly ranked somewhere in the 100s. It would be very difficult for a country like Nigeria to become 85th like Benin, 81st like Ghana, 66th like Senegal, or 44th like Rwanda considering Nigeria's geographic size, oil curse, post-colonial borders, and traditional patronage networks, among other factors. But supposing Nigeria succeeded in making a dramatic turnaround on corruption and became ranked 85th like Benin: would that necessarily mean there would not be a Boko Haram? Would the reduction of corruption also be across the whole nation or in just a few regions, in which case the northeast, where Boko Haram operates, might be less affected by such improvements?
Moreover, even countries with much less corruption than Nigeria like Mali (122nd), Egypt (117th), and Burkina Faso (74th) in Africa or the Philippines (111th) in Asia are experiencing a significant amount of violence and insurgent activity on their territories, so what makes one think if Nigeria vastly improved its anti-corruption record it would see a major reduction in Boko Haram's violence? While these Transparency International corruption rankings are imperfect and do not encompass the full range of issues related to corruption, it is fair to say that corruption is a good, but not particularly reliable, predictor of insurgent violence: Madagascar (155th), Uzbekistan, Haiti and Zimbabwe (tied at 157th), Cambodia and Congo-Brazzaville (tied at 161st), and Equatorial Guinea, North Korea, and Guinea-Bissau (tied at 171st) all have worse corruption rankings than Nigeria but tend to have much less terrorism or insurgency in their countries than Nigeria.
While reducing corruption in Nigeria is a public good and will contribute to countering the insurgency, solutions will also have to come from other areas as much as, if not more than, reducing corruption, including, for example, understanding and countering the influence of the group's ideology, breaking up the group's networks to arms, fuel and food suppliers, and making reconstruction and governance of liberated areas and the return of displaced persons more efficient.
2. "The narrative that Boko Haram was a close collaborator of al-Qaida has dangerous implications for policymaking. The policies that have been devised for responding to al-Qaida are not suitable for responding to Boko Haram, and treating Boko Haram largely through the lens of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency could hurt many more innocent people and exacerbate a grievous humanitarian emergency."
This is another irony in the five academics' analysis: They accuse me of being "partisan" in their article, yet one of their main lines of attack on me is seemingly rooted in distinct policy preferences. However, I do not discuss counterterrorism policy or strategy in my Perspectives on Terrorism article and rarely discuss it in my broader corpus of work, and to ascribe any such policy recommendation to my article or my general body of work is a blatant misreading and misrepresentation. My work has sought primarily to analyze Boko Haram. I have my own sets of objections to the way counterterrorism and counterinsurgency policies have been designed and implemented. When one reads policy prescriptions backward into factual analyses, the inevitable result is distortion of the facts in service of desired policies.
The academics seem to believe that because I argue al-Qaida had a "significant impact" on three important phases in Boko Haram's history I necessarily support the "policies that have been devised for responding to al-Qaida", which they do not describe at all. This is a logical fallacy: my argument does not necessarily lead to support for any particular policies. Indeed, the former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria from 2007 to 2010, which is the period when Boko Haram launched the jihad that continues to the present, Robin Sanders, is a Board Member of Human Rights Watch. At the same she explicitly recognizes the "linkages" between Boko Haram and al-Qaida and has argued that Boko Haram's tactical improvements came from al-Qaida's support. There is no contradiction between her recognizing such linkages and also promoting human rights.
For example, in a May 2014 program on National Public Radio (NPR) after Dr. Carl LeVan said "many of [Boko Haram's] international ties remain fairly speculative", Robin Sanders then commented, "I just wanted to say something on [Boko Haram's] al-Qaida-like tactics, whether it's coming from al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb or other places. Although, yeah, I can't give you details, but I can say with absolute certainty that I know for sure that those linkages are there. And they have been there since the killing of Muhammed Yusuf in 2009.... I know they are there and I think that some of these new tactics are coming from those linkages." She then added, "And I'm just wondering whether this new tactic of abducting these young girls is something that they've learned from outside terrorist groups that are advising them on how to -- you know, how to achieve their goals. They have picked up terrorist tactics in the past from outsiders, and I'm wondering now if they have gotten additional terrorist tactics training from others." [38]
3. "He cherry-picks and decontextualizes quotations and data points. He ignores contradictions between sources."
The five academics in their attempted critique of my Perspectives on Terrorism article from December 2017 worked together to provide a supposed example of my "cherry-picking" and found an article I wrote in 2014 in Current Trends in Islamist Ideology called "Nigerian Al-Qaedaism". They say in the article "Zenn cherry-picks an off-handed reference to Algeria in one of Yusuf 's lectures (which itself mostly concerned supererogatory night prayer) in order to argue that 'the influence of Algerian Islamism on Yusuf 's thinking cannot be understated.'" They then say "If this was so, why did Yusuf not write at length about Algeria in his 2009 manifesto Hadhihi 'Aqidatuna wa-Manhaj Da'watina? Revealingly, Zenn has rarely cited that source, because it would provide almost no support for his argument that Yusuf was tightly linked with al-Qa'ida and its affiliates."
First of all, I have never written that Muhammed Yusuf was "tightly linked" to al-Qaida. In fact, my Perspectives on Terrorism article argued al-Qaida had a "significant impact" on Boko Haram in 2002-2003, 2009-2010 and 2011-2012. Muhammed Yusuf was the Boko Haram leader from 2004-2009, which is exactly period when I argue that al-Qaida had less of an influence on Boko Haram. They make another blatant misrepresentation.
On the influence of Algerian Islamism on Muhammed Yusuf, I also cited in that article from 2014 the excerpted quote below from one of Muhammed Yusuf's sermons in 2009, which the academics neglected to mention in their attempted critique:
"In Algeria, they tried to introduce democracy. But when they realized democracy was anti-Islam and anti-God, they came back to the way of Shari'a. They formed an Islamic Jihadist group that was initially made up of more than 50,000 people. But when the group refused to follow the way of Shari'a, the way of Allah, their numbers declined drastically." [39]
The academics also neglected to mention that I wrote in the article in 2014 how the prominent Salafi Shaykh Muhammed Auwal Albani, who knew Muhammed Yusuf, stated:
"Yusuf had listened to some leaders of the Algerian Islamist insurgency pronounce a fatwa that prohibited the militants from attending schools and working for the government. Besides having been rejected by the vast majority of Algerian scholars, the fatwa was rooted in the specific experience of the Algerian civil war of the 1990s between the military government and armed Islamist cells operating from the mountains. Yusuf blindly absorbed it and applied it to Nigeria." [40]
One of the ironies in the five authors' attack against me is when – without providing any evidence, examples or citations – they say "readers should also beware of how Zenn discusses the secondary literature, and how he distorts chronology to imply that scholars neglected to mention evidence that only became available after their publications appeared." Yet Muhammed Yusuf's manifesto Hadhihi 'Aqidatuna wa-Manhaj Da'watina, which they criticize me for not citing in my 2014 article, was not generally available to the scholarly community until 2015 – one year after my article on Boko Haram's ideology for Current Trends in Islamist Ideology was published. Hadhihi 'Aqidatuna wa-Manhaj Da'watina was therefore also not cited in any of these five authors' work until 2015; yet they accuse me of not citing it in my article on Boko Haram ideology from 2014. [41] More generally, I "rarely cite" Hadhihi 'Aqidatuna wa-Manhaj Da'watina in my work on Boko Haram because I rarely write specifically on Boko Haram ideology as in the 2014 article in Current Trends in Islamist Ideology. This suggests readers should "beware" of how these five academics distort chronology to imply that scholars neglected to mention evidence that only became available after their own publications appeared.
A further irony is that some of these authors seem to not have read Hadhihi 'Aqidatuna wa-Manhaj Da'watina themselves, let alone cite it when it presents contradictions between their sources (or lack thereof). In a 2017 book chapter, for example, Pérouse de Montclos described Muhammed Yusuf – without any sourcing at all – as a "charismatic and mystical preacher" and said Yusuf "was alleged to have visions and supernatural powers... legend has it he prepared magical potions to bewitch his followers." [42] Also without sourcing Pérouse de Montclos said in the book chapter that during the clashes with the Nigerian security forces in July 2009 Yusuf's fighters "wore amulets" and that "Yusuf followed the trajectory of Muslim exorcists" and reached "a compromise with African witchcraft." [43] None of this comports with existing scholarship on Boko Haram and Muhammed Yusuf or any credible academic work on the group. Pérouse de Montclos relied on what was "alleged" or a "legend" without citing any sources about who "alleged" these things and who told him this "legend."
Pérouse de Montclos' descriptions of Muhammed Yusuf's beliefs certainly do not comport with Yusuf's manifesto Hadhihi 'Aqidatuna wa-Manhaj Da'watina, which means "This Is Our Creed and the Methodology of Our Preaching" in Arabic. The manifesto cites Wahhabi scholars from the 19th century and in it Yusuf affirms that "our religion is Islam, our creed is the creed of the Prophet and his Companions and our manhaj (methodology) is jihad" and states that tawhid (monotheism) as well as the Qur'an, Sunna, and ahadith (reported sayings of the Prophet) are the foundation for all religious and political authority in Islam. The book specifically describes Yusuf's beliefs in accord with the Salafi approach to Islam, which rejects any of the beliefs Pérouse de Montclos attributed to Yusuf without sourcing. "Revealingly," however, Pérouse de Montclos has rarely cited Yusuf's manifesto because it would provide almost no support for his argument that Yusuf was "far from the orthodox Salafi model." [44]
Five academics working together to label me as a cherry-picker reached to one of my articles from four years ago in 2014, when a lot less was known about Boko Haram compared to now, to find an alleged example of my "cherry-picking". In any event, their example from 2014 appears to not have been very convincing, especially considering they also had to misrepresent my work to try to make their point.
4. "He fails to transparently report the positions and biases of the sources he prefers (sources that are, frequently, either anonymous quotations from Nigerian and foreign intelligence services, or selectively cited jihadist primary sources)."
This is also a misrepresentation. They did not cite any examples to support this claim, and they would be hard-pressed to find any examples where I rely on anonymous intelligence sources—and certainly none in the article they are supposedly critiquing.
It is the case, however, that after there is a major bombing or a kidnapping of a foreigner in northern Nigeria, the media will usually report who Nigerian and local government or intelligence services claim carried out the operation (usually it is alleged to be Boko Haram). One way to deal with the issue of government or media claims of Boko Haram attacks is to cite multiple sources, rather than rely only on the government's or military's attribution. This is the way I dealt with the kidnapping of a German engineer in Kano in January 2012 in footnote 65 of my Perspectives on Terrorism article from December 2017, where I cited to one Algerian government and one Nigerian government source and two AQIM primary sources, all of which corroborated my assessment that AQIM claimed and Ansaru carried out the kidnapping of the German engineer in Kano in January 2012. [45]
One of the ironies of these academics' analysis is that they use a lesser standard for sourcing than me and sometimes use no standard at all. In his Chatham House report in 2014, Pérouse de Montclos described the same kidnapping of the German engineer in Kano in January 2012 as such [46]:
"The splinter group Ansaru, however, is certainly more aligned with the doctrine of Osama bin Laden. Its targets are more international and its original name was Al-Qaida in the Lands Beyond the Sahel. In 2012 its videos claiming the kidnap and, later on, the killing of a German hostage in Kano were posted on AQIM's website."
However, in the footnote after "AQIM's website" Pérouse de Montclos included no sources whatsoever. He only wrote in the footnote:
"At the time, Ansaru obtained from the German authorities the liberation of a woman who was the website administrator of the Islamic Jihad Union. Filiz Gebwicz, aka Sayf Allah al-Ansari, was released in May 2012. But her husband, a German convert to Islam, has remained in jail since his arrest in April 2007 for planning to detonate car bombs at Ramstein Air Force base and Frankfurt Airport."
Again without any sourcing – whether from a government or elsewhere – one is left to wonder where Pérouse de Montclos obtained his information about Ansaru carrying out the kidnapping and how he could verify "Filiz Gebwicz" (whose name is actually "Filiz Gelowicz") was released in May 2012? [47] He also seems not to have seen the sources that would justify his claims because he wrote in that Chatham House report that Ansaru's claims were "posted on an AQIM website". The claim of the kidnapping, however, was made by AQIM, not Ansaru, and it was posted on a jihadi web forum, not an AQIM website: AQIM does not have a website as such. The question remains as to why he provided no sources for his claims about this kidnapping, and if he obtained the information about Ansaru's role in the kidnapping and "Filiz Gebwicz'" from another scholar's work, why did he not cite that scholar? Before these five authors claim there are problems with my sourcing, it might be wise for them to first evaluate their own sourcing.
"The case of the kidnapping of this German engineer in Kano in January 2012 also illustrates how these academics downplay Boko Haram's ties to al-Qaida. In their attempted critique of me now in 2018, they describe this kidnapping of the German engineer in Kano and two other Ansaru kidnappings as cases of "Non-Nigerian citizens whom Boko Haram or Ansaru possibly kidnapped and/or killed..."" (italics added for emphasis). [48]
Although Pérouse de Montclos already wrote in 2014 that Ansaru carried out the kidnapping of the German engineer in Kano in January 2012, in 2018 he and his academic group now cast doubt that Ansaru kidnapped and killed the German engineer in Kano and whether Ansaru or Boko Haram were responsible for kidnapping and killing two foreigners and seven foreigners in March 2012 in Sokoto and February 2013 in Bauchi, respectively. [49] They now downplay Ansaru's role in those three kidnappings by using the word "possibly" to convey doubt where there really is none and to imply that someone else aside from Boko Haram or Ansaru may have carried out the kidnappings. As I will demonstrate in Rebuttal #24, the five authors commonly try to create doubt about whether Boko Haram or Ansaru carried out attacks that they actually carried out while providing false alternatives about who may have been the perpetrator if not Boko Haram or Annsaru. This has misled readers and contributed to creating unnecessary confusion and, as I will show, conspiracy theories.
In the specific cases of Ansaru's kidnappings in 2011-2013, if Ansaru "possibly" did not carry out those attacks, who do they suppose did? Thurston suggested in 2011 that the "most likely identity for the kidnappers" responsible for Ansaru's first kidnapping—the two hostages killed in Sokoto in March 2012—was that they were "freelancers not motivated by ideology but by money" until that assessment was proven incorrect and it became clear that Ansaru was responsible. [50] In fact, Thurston later updated his assessment to say that "any doubts about whether it really was Boko Haram that kidnapped the Europeans... may be swept aside as the narrative takes hold that this kidnapping was a Boko Haram operation, full stop." [51] Although later it became clear it was actually an Ansaru operation, not Boko Haram, Thurston now in 2018 has reverted closer to his 2011 position, distorted the evidence, and contradicted himself by expressing doubt with his academic group and saying that "Boko Haram or Ansaru possibly kidnapped and/or killed these hostages". He previously claimed the same kidnapping was "a Boko Haram operation, full stop."
Thurston's incorrect initial assessment about Ansaru's kidnappings was not necessarily unreasonable – he perhaps had not studied how AQIM was moving southwards in the Sahel and had recruited Nigerian kidnappers into ranks from the mid-2000s, such as Khalid al-Barnawi. His incorrect assessment, however, shows that an academic in area studies like Thurston closely watching Nigeria day-to-day still struggled to fathom AQIM, Ansaru, or Boko Haram kidnapping cells in northern Nigeria as of late 2011. This highlights why it is important to allow room for varying approaches to analysis and assessing probabilities. It also raises the question about how much we should trust these five academics now when in their article they lambast again and describe as an "egregious prediction" and misrepresent – by adding the word "imminent" which my co-author and I did not use – an analysis a colleague and I drafted in 2016 suggesting AQIM may again operate in Nigeria. [52] Perhaps they have not learned from their past mistakes.
5. "Zenn's claims about Ansaru - particularly his repeated assertion that Ansaru was reintegrated into Boko Haram around 2013 - rests on weak evidence and is not substantiated by the jihadist primary sources he prefers...."
It surprises me that of all people Pérouse de Montclos would be among the five academics to suggest Ansaru members' reintegration with Boko Haram "rests on weak evidence" when in his own article in Small Wars and Insurgencies in 2016 he profiled a militant named Jimoh Mustapha (Abu Qasim) and wrote Jimoh Mustapha:
"encouraged Ebira Muslims of Kogi State to join the jihad. In 2014, he allegedly formed a group merging Ansaru and a Boko Haram cell led by Abu Suyuti in Okene Local Government Area. Inspired by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, he was possibly succeeded by one Asa Dullah in 2015 or 2016" (italics added for emphasis). [53]
I do not rely on this profile of Jimoh Mustapha in my analyses of Ansaru members' reintegrating with Boko Haram, however, because it was completely unsourced and I avoid relying on claims that appear to come from interviews with anonymous intelligence officers.
I argue Ansaru members (not Ansaru as an organization) reintegrated into Boko Haram – and the five authors are right that I make this argument not based on my "preferred primary sources." It is possible to conduct analysis even without primary sources that I – and presumably most analysts – prefer. Indeed, one of these academics' weaknesses is their excessive reliance on "hard" evidence. Thurston, for example, wrote that only this year in 2018 he "acknowledged and began to analyze the ties and exchanges between Boko Haram and AQIM" after seeing "precious new evidence" – what he calls "hard" evidence – that surfaced in April 2017. [54] This new evidence was AQIM's release of a 67-page document featuring letters between AQIM's leader and commanders and Boko Haram from the 2009 to 2011 period and an AQIM treatise by its sharia head. [55]
However, various scholars, including myself in a CTC Sentinel article from as early as November 2012, were already seriously analyzing the "ties and exchanges" between AQIM and Boko Haram five years earlier than Thurston says he "acknowledged and began to analyze" them. [56] Even after Thurston "analyzed" this "precious" 67-page document his assessment of Boko Haram's ties to AQIM changed only from an assessment that AQIM had a "marginal" impact on Boko Haram in 2016 to a "perhaps not decisive" impact on Boko Haram in 2018. Despite the extent to which that document shows AQIM's (and al-Shabab's) ties and support to Boko Haram, it hardly influenced Thurston's assessment of the relationship, as if he had a pre-determined opinion to downplay ties, no matter what the evidence showed.
Ansaru members' reintegration with Boko Haram offers a textbook example of how analysis can be done even without "hard" evidence or primary sources. To make the argument Ansaru members reintegrated with Boko Haram, I provide evidence from secondary sources. The key to analyzing Ansaru members' reintegration into Boko Haram without "hard" evidence, such as a letter or video with an Ansaru member overtly saying "I reintegrate from Ansaru to Boko Haram", is to observe the "sudden changes" [57] in Boko Haram's tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) in 2013 that resembled the TTPs of Ansaru.
I refer readers to my Studies in Conflict and Terrorism article from February 2018, where I wrote:
"The below sub-sections will show that the process of reintegration of Ansaru into Boko Haram began as early as November 2012 but accelerated in February 2013 coinciding with the kidnapping of the French family in northern Cameroon, Abu Fatima's reintegration into Boko Haram, and the return to northeastern Nigeria of Nigerian militants and other Ansaru members who were in Mali with AQIM after the French-led military intervention in Mali. In addition, it will explain why Ansaru members reintegrated with Boko Haram and later with Islamic State." [58]
A full reading of that article will show that Ansaru members' reintegration into Boko Haram began with Khalid al-Barnawi's reconciliation with Abubakar Shekau in late 2012 and that Boko Haram's adoption of the tactic of kidnapping foreigners for ransom in Cameroon, including one that was claimed in "cooperation" with Ansaru in 2013, showed Boko Haram was merging with Ansaru cells and that Boko Haram's new TTPs were being influenced by Ansaru. These five authors could nitpick and say I was not clear enough in affirming Ansaru leaders and members—and not Ansaru as an organization—reintegrated into Boko Haram. However, since the five authors cite my Studies in Conflict and Terrorism in their attempted critique of me they should have been aware of my argument that Ansaru as an organization did not reintegrate into Boko Haram, but that Ansaru leaders and members did. I wrote, for example, "Without Khalid al-Barnawi and Abu Fatima [who cooperated with and re-joined Boko Haram, respectively, after late 2012] and other operationally oriented fighters, Ansaru became primarily a media group loyal to Al Qaida that criticized Shekau but no longer a fighting group after 2013" (italics added for emphasis). [59]
Pertinent to the dispute at hand, these five academics write in their attempted critique several ad hominem attacks about me related to my analysis of Ansaru, including:
. that "Zenn has built much of his career around the idea that Ansaru was a formidable, elite group of AQIM-linked terrorists";
. that my "most speculative" work is about Ansaru;
. that I grant "Ansaru and its leaders sweeping powers";
. that I "position those figures at the heart of nearly every central event involving Boko Haram"; and they ask
· "Why should Zenn's argument that Ansaru reintegrated into Boko Haram be accepted, when Ansaru's own leaders never mention such a reintegration and continue to voice hatred for Shekau?"
In response to this, I say, first, these five authors themselves have described Ansaru in their own writing as "exhibit[ing] much more potential [than Boko Haram] to become al-Qaida's Nigerian affiliate"; as "demonstrat[ing] a greater degree of ideological convergence with Al-Qaida than [Boko Haram];" as "a professional terrorist organization rather than a sect, and all of its members are combatants"; as "distinguish[ing] itself by attacking international targets"; and as "certainly more aligned with the doctrine of Osama bin Laden....." [60] So, it is clearly not only me who says Ansaru was a "formidable, elite group of AQIM-linked terrorists."
Second, they do not know about my career when they claim I "built much" of it around Ansaru. This is either their speculation, a lack of knowledge about my career, or another ad hominem attack.
Third, because Ansaru did not form until 2011-2012, it quite obvious I do not figure Ansaru leaders "at the heart of nearly every central event involving Boko Haram", such as the group's founding in 2002-2003 or launch of jihad in 2009-2010, which were two of three focuses of my Perspectives on Terrorism article in December 2017. Moreover, I do not even figure Ansaru "at the heart" of Boko Haram's campaign of suicide bombings in 2011-2012. Rather, in my Perspectives on Terrorism article and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism article, I argue "Ansaru-leaning" and "Ansaru-aligned" Boko Haram members were responsible for the suicide bombing campaign. These are members of Boko Haram like Mamman Nur who did not defect from Boko Haram to Ansaru, which I argue was because of their fear of Abubakar Shekau's retribution against them if they defected. However, these "Ansaru-leaning" and "Ansaru-aligned" Boko Haram members still had operational and ideological overlap with Ansaru and training experience with AQIM and al-Shabab that was similar to the militants who did defect to Ansaru. This is why I consider those Boko Haram members involved in the campaign of suicide bombings to be Ansaru-leaning" and "Ansaru-aligned" but not Ansaru themselves. I could have chosen a different label for them such as "independent-oriented" or "non-aligned" Boko Haram members, and I welcome constructive criticism on that. However, the leaked audios of Mamman Nur and Abu Fatima from 2016 show so much ideological convergence with Ansaru founder Khalid al-Barnawi's letter to AQIM before his founded Ansaru that I am comfortable with labeling Mamman Nur and Abu Fatima as "Ansaru-aligned" or "Ansaru-leaning." [61]
Fourth, the five authors misunderstand the analytical value of Ansaru: it is the only case of a known faction to formally split from Boko Haram and Shekau and become its own separate group. To these academics, however, I "inflate the profile of Ansaru, a group that only carried out a handful of publicly known attacks before largely fading from view in 2013." [62] The group is important not so much because of its operations and its "handful of publicly known attacks," which were still a major concern for foreigners (and especially engineers). Rather Ansaru is important analytically because of what it teaches us about Boko Haram's internal organizational dynamics and the costs of defecting from Boko Haram: I argue Shekau's retribution forced the group into submission after which key leaders and members reintegrated back into Boko Haram. My Studies in Conflict and Terrorism article discusses this in some detail. [63]
Lastly, a close reading of the five academics' article shows that they provide little to no evidence to counter my argument about Ansaru's reintegration into Boko Haram. Their only counter-argument is that Ansaru's leader in one article he wrote in January 2017 did not admit that some members re-integrated into Boko Haram, so therefore my analysis about Ansaru leaders or members reintegrating into Boko Haram must be "speculative." However, al-Qaida groups usually do not air "dirty laundry" publicly, nor do they like to publicly admit weakness, such as losing fighters to rival groups. The five authors also do not address why Abu Fatima, Abu Nasir, Khalid al-Barnawi, and Jimoh Mustapha were in Ansaru at one point, but later joined or cooperated with Boko Haram and why Boko Haram suddenly adopted Ansaru-style TTPs only starting after the French-led military intervention in Mali in February 2013 and even claimed a kidnapping in "cooperation" with Ansaru in 2013. I would be eager to learn from them how that all can be possible without some Ansaru leaders and members reintegrating with Boko Haram.
The fact they do not offer any meaningful critique to disprove my argument about Ansaru members reintegrating into Boko Haram but only lambast it and say it "rests on weak evidence" is a classic logical fallacy, an appeal to authority: they simply count on a supposedly uninformed and incurious audience to take them at their word. The prevalence of logical fallacies, selective readings, and unsubstantiated personal attacks throughout their article is but another reason why it is harmful for the field to have five academics in area studies try to attack another scholar who comes at the issue from a different vantage point and analytical methodology, but this is their goal: to drum out those who do not think like them or agree with them and especially a "key voice with substantial influence."
In sum, if my argument about Ansaru members' reintegration into Boko Haram is my "most speculative", as they say, then I take that as a compliment.
6. "The turning point in our understanding of Zenn's aims was his 2014 paper 'Exposing and Defeating Boko Haram: Why the West Must Unite to Help Nigeria Defeat Terrorism,' published for the conservative British think tank, the Bow Group."
Again while these five authors criticize me for allegedly citing their older work and not their more "updated" work, their article shows that rather than critique my December 2017 article, which was the alleged purpose of their 'reply article' in April 2018, they instead cherry-picked two older papers from 2014, including the one in Current Trends in Islamist Ideology. They then highlighted the alleged weaknesses of those two older papers and conflated them with my December 2017 article to argue that the December 2017 article, which countered their arguments about Boko Haram, must therefore be weak. This is a way for to them to avoid actually engaging my arguments that challenged their longstanding views on Boko Haram.
They, for example, cite a paper from 2014 that was never formally published and that I volunteered to provide to the Bow Group (which, contrary to the academics' claim, is not a think tank but rather a consulting group). The paper derived from an unpublished memo of mine about Boko Haram and Ansaru that I provided to two Bow Group representatives after they approached me at a speaking engagement in London. The Bow Group edited the paper before posting it on their website to add some misleading political commentary. I qualified that commentary by having them state "some believe that..." or "there are concerns that..." which these five authors have distorted to imply that I personally believe those things.
In his book Thurston then further distorted the actual quotes in that paper to interpret them in the most negative way possible—and an incorrect way. For example, the paper stated "There are concerns that some representatives or consultants of the U.S. Democratic Party may be associating with northern Nigerian politicians connected to Boko Haram." Anyone can google "Axelrod Buhari" and see that there were such concerns in Nigeria in 2014-2015 even if they were driven by incorrect perceptions. However, Thurston goes out of his way to bluntly write that "[Zenn] links Boko Haram to the U.S. Democratic Party." [64] Thurston makes a poor and unscholarly interpretation, if not outright and deliberate misrepresentation.
In addition, that paper also observes that "Sanusi's connections [to the father of the Nigerian 'underwear bomber' who attempted to bring down a U.S.-bound airplane for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula on Christmas Day in 2010] as well as the fact that several Boko Haram and Ansaru leaders were recruited from universities in Sudan [where Sanusi studied] worries some Nigerians. They suspect Sanusi may support politically oriented Boko Haram factions that have sought to destabilize Nigeria during Jonathan's tenure" (italics added for emphasis). Even though those concerns were based on incorrect perceptions, Thurston was wrong to go out of his way in his book to write that "[Zenn] accuses Sanusi—a target of Boko Haram—of supporting the sect [Boko Haram]." [65] There are no other references related to Sanusi and Boko Haram in the paper. Therefore, again Thurston makes a poor and unscholarly interpretation, if not outright deliberate misrepresentation. As evidence of this, Princeton University Press has since decided to revise some of Thurston's unprofessional and incorrect accusations and misrepresentations about me in future editions of his book (and has already done so in the online version). This attests to Thurston's excessive efforts to discredit me such that even his publisher recognizes it was unacceptable.
Thurston committed a separate act of poor – and likely unethical – scholarship in his book when he reached back again and cited my "Nigerian al-Qaedaism" article for Current Trends in Islamist Ideology in 2014, and no other sources at all, and wrote:
"One explanation holds that Boko Haram is best understood as an extension or even a puppet of the global jihadist movement—casting Boko Haram as a kind of 'Nigerian al-Qaedaism,' and claiming that foreign backers, especially Algerians, long pulled Boko Haram's strings." [66]
Thurston's citation therefore indicates that in my "Nigerian al-Qaedaism" article or elsewhere in my corpus of work I have written that Boko Haram is "best understood" by viewing global jihadists as using Boko Haram as "puppets" or by viewing AQIM or Algerians as "long pulling the strings" of Boko Haram. However, I have never used those terms in my entire body of work ("puppet" or "pulled strings"), including in the "Nigerian al-Qaedaism" article that Thurston cited. In that article, I not only do not use the terms "puppets" or "pulled strings", but I only use the word "control" twice to refer specifically to Boko Haram's and AQIM's control of territory in Nigeria in 2014 and Mali in 2012. [67] The most I say in the "Nigerian al-Qaedaism" article about AQIM or global jihadists influencing Boko Haram's operations is that "dozens of [Muhammed] Yusuf's followers fled Nigeria to train with AQIM in the Sahel to avenge Yusuf's death," which is an argument that has since been buttressed by primary sources. [68]
I have never argued AQIM "controlled" Boko Haram or Boko Haram was a "puppet of the global jihadist movement" or that AQIM or Algerians "long pulled the strings" of Boko Haram. Any scholar knows that my observation that al-Qaida or AQIM had a "significant impact" on Boko Haram is much different than asserting al-Qaida or AQIM "pulled Boko Haram's strings" or that Boko Haram was a "puppet" of global jihadists. Thurston was either extremely careless in his wording in his book, which is poor scholarship that should be acknowledged, or he deliberately misrepresented me by including the title of one of my articles from 2014 in a sentence and then attributing two arguments to me in subsequent text that neither I nor any other scholar makes.
Although Princeton University Press agreed to revise some of Thurston's personal attacks on me in his book, Thurston rejected Princeton University Press' requests to remove or revise these two misrepresentations. After consulting with Thurston, Princeton University Press wrote to me and said it would "stand by" Thurston's "unique interpretation" of that article. This was not a "unique interpretation": it was a wholly inaccurate interpretation. Thurston either is a non-scholar who sourced poorly according to his capabilities, or he deliberately misrepresented the work of another scholar in his book and refused to acknowledge it when confronted: this is below the ethical standards of any scholar. [69]
The five authors say they have "reason to question Zenn's sincerity and integrity as an analyst": on the contrary, these examples from Thurston's book and the five authors' misrepresentations of my work in their attempted critique in April 2018 demonstrate that I have reason to question their sincerity and integrity. Thurston's inaccurate sourcing and overly aggressive and unprofessional efforts to misrepresent my work in his book and in the attempted critique with the four other members of his academic group provides important context about their actual motives. [70]
In contrast to Thurston's approach, if one reads my Perspectives on Terrorism article from December 2017 and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism article from February 2018, one will see I critiqued the work of several of these five authors and that my quotations and representations of their work were in good faith and much more accurate than the way Thurston represented my work in his book and the way the five authors represented me in their attempted critique. This is likely why they claim that I "misrepresent [their] scholarship" but provide no examples of it. Had I actually misrepresented their work, their article would have been the appropriate forum to correct or clarify any of the alleged misrepresentations of their work. The fact they did not do that once in their article shows I either made no misrepresentations of their work or their article was not actually for the purpose of 'replying' to my Perspectives on Terrorism article from December 2017 or broader body of work. Rather the purpose of their article was to make ad hominem allegations against me as a way to attempt to cancel out the opposing viewpoint of a scholar who they say has become "a key voice with substantial influence" and has the sources, evidence and arguments to counter their arguments. This is an example of them displaying gatekeeping in academia at its finest.
Regarding the Bow Group paper, notwithstanding that the predictive analysis in the report, such as about Boko Haram and the Islamic State, was correct, and that the late terrorist designation of Boko Haram was reasonably worthy of scrutiny (whether or not one agrees with the designation or not), I agree with the academics that some politicians were portrayed in a more negative light than they deserved in the paper and that Buhari's and Sanusi's views and rhetoric have evolved in positive ways from the 1980s until today, and they should earn respect and credit for that as well as for meritorious actions in their current leadership roles.
7. "We are concerned by ways Zenn's arguments align with powerful interests in Nigeria (particularly the Nigerian intelligence services' repeated bid to paint Boko Haram as a global threat) and in the United States (particularly the Republican Party's effort to demonize and undercut the State Department)."
This statement is speculative and conspiratorial. The academics cite no examples of anyone, including myself, painting Boko Haram as a "global threat", let alone anyone specifically in Nigeria or the Republican Party citing my work to do so. I discuss the threat of ISWAP, Boko Haram and Ansaru to both international and Nigerian interests in Nigeria as well as in other countries in the region where they operate. It is also either a deliberate misrepresentation or careless reading on the part of these five academics to not recognize the difference between arguing that Boko Haram and Ansaru are a "threat to international interests" and arguing they are a "global threat."
I presented congressional testimony in November 2013. In that testimony, I took a position on Boko Haram, which is the most "political" experience on my record, and I disagreed with a number of academics, where I wrote in my testimony that the U.S. should:
"Label Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), which could bring the power of international financial and anti-money laundering institutions to bear on Boko Haram's financial sponsors. Otherwise, this label is meaningless and should be abandoned; if Boko Haram is not an FTO, then who is?" [71]
My approach is to assume good faith in others. Thurston was resourced by Saudi-funded and Qatari-funded organizations in recent years and has advocated positions that align heavily with Qatari state interests. [72] I could cast aspersions against him and express "concern by ways" his claims are aligned with "powerful interests" in Qatar, such as that AQIM-affiliated Malian jihadist leader Ag Ghaly is "not really committed" to Salafism or that the Qatar-backed Benghazi Defense Brigades in Libya should not be "stigmatized." [73] But in the absence of clear evidence of that, I will assume he has contributed his scholarship independently and happens to have been resourced by Qatar.
8. "We reply that Zenn's framing of causality makes a mockery not only of the complexity of Boko Haram, but also of the social scientific enterprise in general: since the time of at least Durkheim and Weber, there has been widespread agreement among scholars in many disciplines that every social phenomenon has causes that cannot be reduced to individuals' decisions. Scholarly work on jihadism should take a similarly multi-faceted approach."
This is yet another oversight on their part that my article in Perspectives on Terrorism did indeed address. I write in the article that "The key debates about Boko Haram reflect the debates surrounding jihadism more generally, such as whether structural and local factors or external influences and individual agency best explain Boko Haram's origins and violent rise." I then write that, "Neither view can be fully correct but this article argues the latter view is more accurate but also underutilised in explaining Boko Haram's founding, launch of a jihad, and tactical innovations, such as suicide bombings." In the conclusion of my article, I reiterate that, "this article does not argue that external factors and individual agency are the only ways to explain the founding and rise of Boko Haram." [74]
Since most other academics are more interested in structural factors, I am filling a gap by arguing from the agency perspective. There is no place in my article where I argue that "every social phenomenon has causes that can be reduced to individuals" or that I discount the "multi-faceted" approach; I argue for the utility of another approach. Anyone can read the introduction and conclusion of my article to see that. The academics make a mockery of their attempted critique by misrepresenting me again.
9. "Responding to the work of several authors of this response, Zenn dismisses the idea that Boko Haram is a 'product of 'multi-dimensional' factors."
I never "dismiss" the "multi-dimensional factors" in my Perspectives on Terrorism article. This is another misrepresentation. Anyone can read the second paragraph of my introduction where I argue that the "agency perspective" is "more accurate [than the "multi-dimensional perspective"] but also "underutilised" in explaining specifically Boko Haram's founding, launch of a jihad, and tactical innovations, such as suicide bombings." I also write in the conclusion that "Neither view can be fully correct." [75] I emphasize one analytical frame over another analytical frame.
A more fruitful discussion would be to discuss "what does Zenn mean by the agency frame?" My argument is that structural arguments, such as corruption, poverty, marginalization, desertification, overpopulation, urbanization and porous borders, are important. However, the more important factor to explain, for example, Boko Haram's founding was the personal decisions, or agency, of Nigerian jihadists like Muhammed Ali to wage a jihad in Nigeria in 2002-2003, which was primarily for ideological reasons.
My argument about agency is similar to Thomas Hegghammer's argument about the Arab mobilization to the Afghan jihad in the 1980s. While recognizing that structural factors were important for that mobilization, Hegghammer argued that the "sufficient cause of the mobilization was the entrepreneurship of the Palestinian shaykh Abdullah Azzam," who was the foremost recruiter of Arabs to Afghanistan. Hegghammer added that:
"Structural explanations cannot explain everything. Accident, agency and leadership are more important for the evolution of small radical actors than is often acknowledged. The Arab mobilization depended on Azzam, and Azzam's involvement was the result of a random meeting in September 1981." [76]
If Azzam had not existed, according to Hegghammer, the structural conditions of the Arab world and Afghanistan in the 1980s likely would not have produced another Azzam to inspire and recruit thousands of Arabs to go to Afghanistan to fight as mujahideen. Azzam's agency was the difference in created the phenomenon of the "Afghan Arabs". Without Azzam, there may not have ever been that phenomenon as a result of existing structural factors (Hegghammer has noted that virtually all Afghan Arabs met, knew or were recruited by Azzam in one way or another).
I would similarly argue that at the time of Boko Haram's founding in 2002-2003 the group was also a "small radical actor" and Boko Haram founder Muhammed Ali's "entrepreneurship" was "more important... than is often acknowledged." Without Muhammed Ali, structural factors in Nigeria likely would not have led to Boko Haram's founding in 2002-2003 or the founding of any other jihadist group.
10. "Can it be that the area studies community who has worked on northern Nigeria for years is naïve, while Zenn has found the key to understanding Boko Haram through a handful of jihadist documents and a smattering of anonymous quotations in the press?"
Where are these "smattering of anonymous quotations in the press"? As I show in this article, these academics themselves have made claims about al-Qaida and Boko Haram with no citations and have interviewed with anonymous foreign intelligence officials, such as Pérouse de Montclos' claim about Jimoh Mustapha in Rebuttal #5.
Second, they minimize primary sources I use as a "handful of jihadist documents". Jihadist primary sources, especially internal documents that were intended only for the jihadists themselves (not as propaganda), are among the most valuable ways to understand Boko Haram's leadership and internal dynamics. I more than welcome discussions on how to interpret the documents, especially in their original Arabic, which I read and speak (I wonder how many of the five academics do?). Fortunately, from a research perspective, there are a growing number of primary sources on Boko Haram that have been found and released by governments, such as the documents about Boko Haram that were found in Bin Laden's compound in 2011, [77] or by jihadists themselves, such as the letters between AQIM and Boko Haram from 2009 to 2011 that AQIM released in April 2017. [78]
The fact the five authors say "all that the primary sources have conclusively shown about the post-2009 period [of Boko Haram] is that some training occurred (the numbers are not yet known), and 200,000 euros may have been transferred" shows they have missed the boat entirely on the importance of the letters between AQIM and Boko Haram from 2009 to 2011, let alone the documents on Boko Haram in Bin Laden's compound. Their failure to analyze and assess those letters and to appreciate what the letters have to offer – if they reviewed them at all – for understanding those two groups' relationship reveals a startlingly deep lack of intellectual incuriosity on their behalf. Anyone who reads those letters will come to much broader findings that those five authors about not only Boko Haram and AQIM but also on Boko Haram and al-Shabab, AQIM influence on Boko Haram's internal factions, and Boko Haram's ideological reference points.
Moreover, those documents confirm the 200,000 was transferred (not "may have been") because there is a request and reminder from AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel to AQIM southern commander to provide the 200,000 euros to Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau and Shekau wrote to Abu Zeid to "thank" him for the "training and financial generosity" after Boko Haram's first attack in September 2010. Droukdel also noted in his letter to Abu Zeid that 200,000 euros was only a starting point and more money could be provided thereafter. These five authors try to write off those documents because they undermine many of their longstanding claims that downplayed and underestimated the relationship between Boko Haram and AQIM.
The fact I argued Boko Haram received training, funding, and arms from AQIM even before the primary source documents emerged in April 2017 also shows I do not rely only on that "handful of primary source documents" either: the new documents in April 2017 simply buttressed previous analysis that I had contributed since late 2012. My previous analysis on Boko Haram and AQIM was based on evidence aside from primary sources, such as assessing Boko Haram's increase in tactical sophistication, including suicide bombings, which, like Ambassador Robin Sanders in Rebuttal #1, I judged were not likely to have increased so rapidly without external support from AQIM or al-Shabab to Boko Haram. Among secondary sources that one could have used to assess the AQIM and al-Shabab relationship with Boko Haram from as early as 2012 are:
. public Nigerian intelligence reports of AQIM funding Boko Haram from 2012 and Boko Haram members' claims at court trials to have received the 200,000 euros from AQIM; [79]
. news reports or official statements about Boko Haram members traveling to Mali and Somalia from 2011; [80]
. a claim from Boko Haram that its members had just returned from Somalia and would soon carry out attacks in 2011 (the first suicide bombing in Boko Haram's history in Abuja was the day after this claim); [81]
. AQIM distributing Abubakar Shekau's Eid al-Adha sermon in October 2010 on jihadist web forums; and
. AQIM, al-Shabab and Boko Haram voicing mutual support for each other in videos from 2010. [82]
And, yes, I think it is possible area studies scholars who "worked on Nigeria for years" can be "naïve" on Boko Haram just as a number of Middle East area studies scholars were "naïve" about the potentiality for foreign fighters from around the world to flood Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003, let alone the potential for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to conquer Mosul in 2014. Boko Haram has represented something new that the Nigeria/Sahel area studies community was not expecting. One reason for this may have been the unfamiliarity with jihadist ideology among area studies scholars on Nigeria and, in a number of cases, their lack of training in Arabic, which is the medium for most jihadist literature and messaging, as well as lack of following jihadist trends outside of sub-Saharan West Africa or sub-Saharan Africa more generally.
I cite in my Perspectives on Terrorism article one of the most highly respected area studies scholars on West Africa, Ousmane Kane, who in 2007 wrote that "if Islamism exists in [sub-Saharan Africa], it exists in the form of moderate revivalists attempting to implement social change." [83] This is not to detract from Kane's career of service in scholarship. It, however, highlights how one of the highest regarded area studies scholars did not have the expectation in 2007—just two years before Boko Haram launched its jihad—that jihadism could become as fierce as it has in Nigeria, let alone Mali, Somalia and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. [84]
Compare the expectation of Kane to that of Stephen Schwartz writing for The Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Monitor two years earlier in 2005 in an article called "Islamic Extremism on the Rise in Nigeria" that would have been considered an "alarmist" [85] prediction from a "non-scholar" by these five area studies academics. Schwartz wrote:
"Although such a portrait of the Nigerian situation may seem sensationalized, it is clear that as the dominant power in the entire West African region, the country will remain a major focus of extreme Islamist attention. In addition, Muslim activists in the West African diaspora living in the U.S. insist, in dismay, that Nigeria, which lacks the widespread influence of Sufis and other mystics found in the coastal Francophone states such as Senegal, is especially susceptible to radical agitation. Finally, Nigeria is also characterized by polarization of Muslims against Christians. In these conditions, Nigeria must be considered a country at serious risk of becoming a major new front for Islamist terrorism" (italics added for emphasis). [86]
Perhaps some area studies scholars were "naïve": Schwartz' forecast was right. This emphasizes again the importance of allowing room for varying approaches to analysis and assessing probabilities.
Finally, the academics ask whether "Zenn has found the key to understanding Boko Haram through a handful of jihadist documents and a smattering of anonymous quotations in the press?" This attempt to be condescending and unprofessional is among the reasons why their article detracts from scholarly discourse. [87] Their approach to dealing with differing interpretations of militant groups stands in contrast to the advice of another scholar who recently wrote, "while completing a review for a journal, I find myself going back over what I wrote to make sure I am critical, not condescending; helpful, not hurtful; direct, not demeaning. It is possible to move the discipline forward.... Can we do this more often?" [88]
11. "Zenn's "framing of militants 'empowered because of al-Qaida's...funding, training and advice' strongly implies a top-down model where well-funded Nigerian militants could recruit freely. But in most scholars' field research in northeastern Nigeria, al-Qa'ida, AQIM, and al-Shabab are almost never mentioned. Moreover, the emerging literature on Boko Haram defectors and former participants finds that ideological and theological motivations often play a secondary role in the process of "joining" the group and participating in violence. Meanwhile, local concerns (experiences with state violence, insecurity, coercion, and economic incentives) are highly important for motivating ordinary fighters. In interviews with over sixty suspected sect members from 2010 to 2017, one of us (Pérouse de Montclos) found that no interviewee referred to al-Qaida or any foreign terrorist group as a reason for joining the insurgents."
I never argue Boko Haram members join the group because of al-Qaida; I argue Boko Haram was "empowered" by al-Qaida (and AQIM and al-Shabab) at the time of its founding in 2002-2003, when it launched a jihad in 2009-2010, and when it launched a campaign of suicide bombings in 2011-2012. In 2013, however, there was an interview of a Nigerian who was part of a group recruited by al-Qaida in Sudan. He then trained with AQIM in Mauritania and Algeria, joined Ansaru and re-integrated with Boko Haram in Nigeria (the Ansaru member said "[Boko Haram] are with us now...We do operations together"). [89] He literally joined Boko Haram because of al-Qaida.
If you interview foot soldiers of almost any insurgent group with thousands of members, including the group's "accidental guerrillas," [90] those foot soldiers may know little or nothing of the politics, strategy and networks of the leaders of the group or the other terrorist groups with which their group has contacts. I have worked with a colleague on translating interviews of Central Asian foot soldiers from Jabhat al-Nusra-allied groups in Syria, some of whom do not know anything about Ayman al-Zawahiri, and thus they did not join because of al-Qaida. That did not mean al-Zawahiri or al-Qaida was irrelevant to understanding Jabhat al-Nusra. Or, for another thought experiment, might some Syrians have said in an interview that they joined Jabhat al-Nusra because they hate Bashar al-Assad but not because of al-Qaida? Would that all of a sudden have made al-Qaida irrelevant to Jabhat al-Nusra?
In Pérouse de Montclos' own Small Wars and Insurgencies article in August 2016, despite not sourcing the information, he profiled a number of Boko Haram leaders with al-Qaida ties, including:
. Abubakar Hassan ("allegedly arrested in the Republic of Niger while traveling to Northern Mali to meet the leaders of AQIM");
. Khalid Al-Barnawi (founder of Ansaru and "succeeded Abubakar Adam Kambar, a jihadist who allegedly fought in Mali and was killed by the Nigerian Army in Kano in 2012")
. Mahamat Daoud ("... he was only a fighter who contacted AQIM in Mali to get supplies and to be recognized as the new leader of the group. He was disappointed that Daesh eventually preferred to deal with Abubakar Shekau...")
. Abu Qasim ("... allegedly formed a group merging Ansaru and a Boko Haram cell led by Abu Suyuti in Okene Local Government Area. Inspired by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria...") [91]
Moreover, to think any researcher can spend a few hours, if even that long, with an alleged Boko Haram foot soldier and through translated interviews determine his/her "reasons for joining" based on what he/she says through the translator is not a reliable methodology, especially when security forces may be nearby and there are other power dynamics between interviewer and interviewee at play. The methodology of asking fighters simply "why did you join?" is also not credible. Pérouse de Montclos' might consider disclosing his interview transcripts of those 60 foot soldiers (redacted for any names to preserve anonymity) he claims to have interviewed, so his methodology can be transparent. [92]
In addition, in what the five authors call the "emerging literature on Boko Haram defectors and former participants" they refer to Pérouse de Montclos' 60 interviews. In his article in Small Wars and Insurgencies in August 2016, however, Pérouse de Montclos' states he conducted interviews in a securitized environment in a prison in Niger (either through a translator or in the prisoners' second or third language of French), and he even said they were "presumed" Boko Haram members, as if he could not confirm they actually fought for the group. [93] His other 10 interviews were, according to his article, on three trips to Borno State from 2010 to 2017 and therefore not conducted consistently over time during this seven-year period. The lack of representativeness of the "presumed" members he interviewed and the extremely small sample size of interviewees for a group of thousands of members like Boko Haram, the securitized environment in which he conducted the interviews, and the lack of transparency about his interview methodology calls into question the scientific reliability of his findings, which are, in any event, seemingly not published in any detail anywhere to constitute "emerging literature."
If you sit for hours, day-by-day, week-by-week with Boko Haram foot soldiers you may come to some deeper answers on motivations. Fatima Akilu, a Nigerian psychologist who has done that with Boko Haram members, says:
"Boko Haram's idea of the caliphate fired the imagination of a lot of young people.... They (young people) want to be part of history, to form their own society and way of life ... to wield a lot of power and re-imagine the world in a way that they want it" (italics added for emphasis). [94]
According to that specific quote, they join perhaps not "because of al-Qaida" but "because of al-Qaida's vision."
12. "Zenn dismisses the idea that Boko Haram was ever a 'mass religious movement,' but video evidence of Yusuf 's preaching in Maiduguri (whose population grew from an estimated 10,000 in 1910 to over 1,000,000 by the time Yusuf rose to prominence) shows hundreds of young men gathering to listen to him discuss religious questions."
The academics have either once again deliberately misrepresented my article or shown carelessness. In my article I wrote:
"Thurston, for example, considers al-Qaida's influence on Boko Haram to have been "marginal" to the group's "overall development" and argues that Boko Haram was a "mass religious movement" before transitioning to armed struggle" (italics added for emphasis). [95]
I never dismiss that Boko Haram was a "mass religious movement." I argue Boko Haram was a "mass religious movement" with thousands of followers in 2005 but only after first transitioning to armed struggle in 2003, not before, as Thurston argues. [96]
I argue Boko Haram was formed in 2002-2003, as virtually all primary and secondary sources from or about Boko Haram, ISWAP and Ansaru attest, including Shekau and ISWAP leader Abu Mus'ab al-Barnawi. I then argue that Boko Haram transitioned to armed struggle ("jihad") in December 2003 when around 20 of its fighters died in clashes with the security forces in Yobe State and up to 100 other fighters died in subsequent clashes in September 2004 and October 2004 in Borno State. [97] Boko Haram, however, became a "mass religious movement" in 2005 after Muhammed Yusuf returned to Nigeria from exile in Saudi Arabia in 2004. Thus, the group transitioned to armed struggle in 2002-2003 before it became a "mass religious movement" in 2005. Boko Haram then again transitioned to "armed struggle" for the second time in 2009-2010 when it launched the jihad that has continued to the present.
13. "In 2003, multiple sources have reported that Yusuf struck an explicit or tacit agreement with the challenger in, and eventual winner of, that year's gubernatorial election, Ali Modu Sheriff. All of these figures facilitated Yusuf 's early rise. It is absurd to suggest that it was only militants who made consequential decisions amid Boko Haram's emergence."
The academics have misrepresented my article: I never suggest anywhere that "only militants" made "consequential decisions amid Boko Haram's emergence."
I agree Yusuf had relationships with politicians who in one way or another paid him off to preach positively about their (arguably superficial) sharia reforms in 2003 and for several years after then, but I am not convinced that these relationships answer key questions I sought to address in my Perspectives on Terrorism article, such as:
. "Where did Boko Haram acquire its arms, funding and training when it launched the jihad in 2009-2010?" (the relationships with politicians were mostly terminated by 2007);
. "Where did Boko Haram acquire its skills and expertise before its suicide bombing campaign in 2011?"; and
. Why did Boko Haram desire to engage in jihad in the first place in 2003 but virtually all other Islamist groups in Nigeria did not?"
I encourage others to seek answers to the three important questions that I sought to address in my article or answer other questions about the group, such as the very broad question that the five authors ask about "who made consequential decisions amid Boko Haram's emergence?"
14. "In this context, it is revealing to note that Zenn does not cite past articles in Perspectives on Terrorism that argue that Boko Haram's focus is primarily local. For example, Zenn does not cite Benjamin Eveslage's 2013 article 'Clarifying Boko Haram's Transnational Intentions, Using Content Analysis of Public Statements in 2012' (Volume 7, Issue 5), which demonstrates that in 2012 – one of the high points, according to Zenn, of coordination between Nigerian jihadists and AQIM – 'Boko Haram [tended] to express itself in an intrinsically domestic orientation, and as such, transnationalization is unlikely.'"
The academics can refer to my body of work. In fact, I address this issue precisely in my Studies in Conflict and Terrorism article from February 2018 where I explain why from April 2011 to November 2012—the focus of Benjamin Eveslage's work—Shekau's messaging was primarily domestic whereas before April 2011 and after November 2012 Shekau focused more on international jihadist themes. [98] Here is what I wrote:
"AQIM media support is likely why Shekau's first ever written statement in July 2010 was posted on a jihadi Web forum and why AQIM's al-Andalus media agency released Shekau's second written statement in October 2010, but after Shekau fell out of favor of AQIM in 2011 the media support to Shekau would have ceased. Shekau's seven videos from April 2011 until the 30 November 2012 video, which may have been in northern Mali, were all uploaded to YouTube, were not posted on jihadi Web forums, were of basic quality and were in Hausa and not Arabic like the July 2010 and October 2010 statements and November 2012 video. The messages in those seven videos also tended to focus on Nigerian themes, such as taunting then president Goodluck Jonathan, which was a contrast to the July 2010 and October 2010 written statements by Shekau and the 30 November 2012 video, which focused on international jihadist themes." [99]
The academics cite this Studies in Conflict and Terrorism article in their attempted critique, so they have seen this paragraph already.
In addition, they misrepresent me. I do not argue 2012 was a "high point" for "coordination between Nigerian jihadists and AQIM." Rather, I argue that in late 2012 there was reconciliation between Shekau and Khalid al-Barnawi, which led to the reintegration of some Ansaru leaders and members into Boko Haram, and that the reconciliation was likely facilitated by AQIM sub-groups in Mali, not AQIM itself.
In fact, on the contrary to the words they put in my mouth, I argue 2012 was mostly a "low point" for coordination between AQIM and Boko Haram. During the period of June 2011 until the end of 2012 AQIM- and al-Shabab-trained Boko Haram members launched their suicide bombing campaign in Nigeria. While the suicide bombing campaign from June 2011 until the end of 2012 represented a "high point" of AQIM and al-Shabab impact in Nigeria, that does not signify coordination. The "high point" for "coordination between Nigerian jihadists and AQIM" occurred before 2012 and was from around August 2009 until mid-2011.
15. "In discussing the background to the 2009 uprising, Zenn gives an extremely distorted version of these events. Zenn implies that Yusuf simply 'announced...he would soon launch a jihad' and then suggests that authorities cracked down preemptively (which is wrong). Tellingly, the only source Zenn cites in this paragraph (endnote 37) is an article from an outlet called African Herald Express. The link that Zenn provides is not only dead, it does not even appear in the Internet Archive's cache. Are no other, better sources available?"
I provided a link, which turned out to be broken, because I tried not to cite Wikileaks directly but to a news report about a Wikileaks cable (some readers in government positions are not allowed to click on Wikileaks weblinks). Nevertheless, that Wikileaks cable from 2009 said that in May-June 2009 Boko Haram leader Muhammed Yusuf was planning attacks on "critical infrastructure" in Nigeria and a "Chadian extremist with limited ties to al-Qaida" entered Nigeria to support Boko Haram (the "Nigerian Taliban"). According to the cable, the U.S. also believed that Boko Haram in 2009 had a "militant subset" of al-Qaida in its ranks. [100] "Tellingly", although Thurston cited eight different Wikileaks cables in his book, he did not cite this particular Wikileaks cable once. This indicates he selectively left it out because it ran counter to his preferred narrative.
The five authors agree with me in their attempted critique that members of Muhammed Yusuf's shura in 2009 were members of "international jihadist movements," such as AQIM. [101] I have interviewed other people who were associated with the group and can attest to Yusuf declaring a jihad in Kaduna months before July 2009, and these authors agree with me that Yusuf declared a jihad against the Nigerian government in his "Open Letter" sermon in June 2009. When Yusuf finally attacked primarily government facilities in northern Nigeria in July 2009, the government's strategy was to completely eradicate the movement. This does not mean that strategy was effective or was in accord with human rights norms. Yusuf probably felt "cornered" and believed in June 2009 he had no other option but to wage jihad in July 2009 or risk the government dispossessing his mosques and giving them to other more pro-government Muslim groups, including Salafis opposed to Yusuf, and arresting more of Yusuf's followers. These government actions may have provoked Yusuf into waging the first attacks of the jihad in July 2009 after which the government, which was likely expecting those attacks, destroyed Yusuf's movement until it reemerged under Shekau's leadership in 2010 and launched attacks with financial and training support from AQIM.
I have already stated in my Perspectives on Terrorism article I sought to address Boko Haram's founding in 2002-2003, launch of jihad from 2009-2010 and campaign of suicide bombings in 2011-2012, which are three significant phases in Boko Haram's history. I never claimed that al-Qaida was significantly involved in all phases or events in the group's history, such as the pre-jihad period from 2007 to 2009 or the government crackdown on Boko Haram in July 2009. Therefore, I never "discussed the background to the 2009 uprising" in my article and did not give a "distorted version of events" as the five authors claim and I never used the word "preemptive" in my article to discuss the government's crackdown, which the five authors put into my mouth. They misrepresent me yet again.
In any event, Abdulbasit Kassim has addressed the differing paradigms of Yusuf's process towards his call to jihad from 2007 to June 2009, including engaging Thurston's and Andrea Brigaglia's differing paradigms on the subject and siding with the latter. [102]
Lastly, broken weblinks can be discussed dispassionately.
16. "If it is one of Zenn's central contentions that 'analysis of primary source documents from Boko Haram and al-Qaida also paints a different story about al-Qaida's relationship with Boko Haram at the time of the group's founding than is presented in most of the literature' (p. 175), then why does he fail to cite any primary sources when describing the most pivotal event in Boko Haram's history?" The reason, it seems to us, is simple: if Zenn were to argue that al-Qa'ida and AQIM were uninvolved or only marginally involved in planning or launching the uprising it would largely discredit his argument that al- Qa'ida and AQIM definitively shaped Boko Haram's actions."
I argued in my Perspectives on Terrorism article that primary sources "paint a different story about al-Qaida's relationship with Boko Haram at the time of the group's founding than is presented in most of the literature." The group's founding was in 2002-2003. This is one of my "central contentions."
I did not argue that primary sources "paint a different story" about the group's clashes with the government in 2009, which the academics reasonably consider to be the most "pivotal event in Boko Haram's history." Just because primary sources paint a different picture about 2002-2003, it does not follow that primary sources therefore paint a different picture about 2009. I think academic knowledge on Boko Haram in the two-year period before the clashes with the government in July 2009 is generally sufficient. I am not aware of new sources, such as testimonies, interviews, or biographies, of that period that paint a new picture about it. I also never said in that al-Qaida had a "significant impact" on all events or phases in Boko Haram's history, such as the July 2009 clashes.
I also did not argue that "al-Qaida and AQIM definitively shaped Boko Haram's actions," as the academics claim I did. This is a misrepresentation of my argument because it is much vaguer than the argument I actually make, which is that al-Qaida (and AQIM and al-Shabab) had a "significant impact" on Boko Haram in three important phases of its history: its founding in 2002-2003; its launch of a jihad in 2009-2010; and first campaign of suicide bombings in 2011-2012.
It is also the five academics, not myself, who say that "analysts, like Zenn, want to hold up AQIM as the dominant factor in explaining Boko Haram's rise and behavior." My argument is not that AQIM was the vaguely defined "dominant factor in explaining Boko Haram's rise and behavior". Rather my argument is that al-Qaida had a "significant impact" on Boko Haram's founding in 2002-2003; its launch of a jihad in 2009-2010; and first campaign of suicide bombings in 2011-2012. I did not address whether al-Qaida was the "dominant factor" in those three phases compared to, for example, ideology, geopolitics, porous borders, availability of small arms, or corruption. I only said al-Qaida had a "significant impact" on those three phases in Boko Haram's history. They again misrepresent me.
17. "From a military perspective, the uprising was a disaster for the movement.... Zenn has presented failures as successes in order to paint the most distressing possible picture of al-Qa'ida and AQIM."
I disagree. Boko Haram's "uprising" provoked the military into such a massive crackdown in July 2009 that AQIM was willing to offer significant support to Boko Haram, as evidenced in primary and secondary sources. Any Boko Haram members who may have been unsure about waging a jihad and killing Nigerian officials were likely now ready to train to kill before the insurgency began with the first attack in September 2010. On the tactical level, the uprising was a failure; on the strategic level, it was what the movement always needed. I never argued the uprising was related to al-Qaida or AQIM; that is another misrepresentation.
Indeed, sometimes what may appear as a "failure" may be a "success", as in the example of the July 2009 uprising. Boko Haram would probably not be where it is today if not for the "success" of the July 2009 uprising despite that it appears as a failure. If terrorism's purpose is to provoke a government overreaction, which it often is, then Boko Haram "succeeded" in July 2009. [103] This is, indeed, why in Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) leader Abu Mus'ab al-Barnawi's 124-page history of Boko Haram published in June 2018 he described the July 2009 "bloody incident (al-waq3'e and al-damiya)" as a "victory (nasr)" that "awakened (nahda)" the leaders of the group. From the perspective of a terrorist himself, the July 2009 clashes led to the "martyrdom" of Abu Mus'ab al-Barnawi's father, Muhammed Yusuf, whom he portrays heroically, and also led to future successes, or "victory", for the group. This is another reason why it is important to encourage those like myself who often come at the issue from a different vantage point -- a terrorism studies angle -- than the five academics to be able to contribute to the discussion on Boko Haram and to prevent these five academics who come at the issue from a uniform area studies angle to try to monopolize the discourse in the field.
18. "Consider the first case – Zenn builds much of his analysis around the figure of Ibrahim Harun - but what did Harun accomplish? Harun was arrested before he could perpetrate any of the terrorist attacks that Zenn describes him plotting. Told from one angle, the story of Harun is the story of Nigeria's close call with a master terrorist. But viewed from another angle, Harun's impact was negligible: a few plots, a few trips, minimal contact with the most influential Boko Haram leaders on the ground in northern Nigeria, and then a flight to Libya where he was soon caught."
Ibrahim Harun's case demonstrated that al-Qaida leadership in Pakistan had a communication line to Boko Haram leaders in 2003, much earlier than previously believed (if it was even previously believed at all), and his case challenges a commonly held view among academics that Boko Haram was a "largely peaceful" group in 2002-2003. If the group was "largely peaceful", why were its leaders accepting a meeting with an al-Qaida member deployed by some of al-Qaida's highest leaders in Pakistan for the purpose of launching attacks in Nigeria?
In addition, I would argue any group of a few hundred individuals – as Boko Haram was in 2002-2003 – whose leaders are willingly in communication with al-Qaida about attack plans is de-facto not "peaceful", even when day-to-day members fish and farm and mix those activities with some form of religious-ideological and physical-military training. [104]
Moreover, the five academics misread or misrepresent me: anyone can read my Perspectives on Terrorism article and see Ibrahim Harun's case was but one data point showing that in 2002-2003 Boko Haram was part of a jihadi project. [105] Moreover, there is no inconsistency with the group being part of a jihadi project and its members fishing and engaging in wage labor.
I also argue al-Qaida (and Boko Haram) is a learning organization. While these five authors focus on the supposed "negligible impact" of Ibrahim Harun and his failure to attack the U.S. embassy in 2003-2004, one must understand that there had to be communications and logistics ties between al-Qaida and Boko Haram to effectuate his mission. Moreover, Boko Haram members who were in Nigeria in 2003 and then trained with AQIM were involved in the attack on the UN Headquarters in Abuja in 2011, including Adam Kambar, who I discuss in my Perspectives on Terrorism article. [106] That attack what was the group's highest-profile attack until that date.
19. "Zenn's treatment of the early Boko Haram also raises questions about his use of evidence - again, not just in this article, but in his broader body of work on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida's affiliates. As elsewhere, Zenn tweaks sources so that they fit into a neat argument. Consider this sentence by Zenn: "Al-Qaida in its al- Risalah magazine in January 2017 also recognized Muhammed Ali as the Boko Haram founder and said his initial funding came from 'members of al-Qaida residing in the Arabian Peninsula'. Al-Risalah, then, neither recognizes Ali as Boko Haram's founder nor says that the money from al-Qa'ida members ever reached him."
What is notable about the excerpt from al-Risalah that the academics choose to cite is that they themselves are being selective. This raises questions about their use of evidence and how they tweak sources to fit their narrative. What they do not include from that article is that it also includes the following:
"While they were in this state, Allah aided and supported them with the emergence of Shaykh Muhammad Yusuf (ra)'s Da'wah. He was previously a follower of the Mujahid brother, Muhammad Ali (May Allãh accept them both); hence the brothers joined him and pledged their allegiance to hear and obey him in good, exerting all they were able to aid and support him upon the truth to which he called." [107]
Therefore, the article makes clear Muhammed Ali preceded Muhammed Yusuf as Boko Haram leader; Yusuf was a follower of Ali. Yet the academics claim that, "Al-Risalah, then, neither recognizes Ali as Boko Haram's founder...." Was there another founder who no one knows of before Muhammed Ali? Perhaps. However, I would argue that there was no other founder of Boko Haram but Muhammed Ali because virtually all primary and secondary sources from or about ISWAP, Boko Haram, and Ansaru attest that the group was founded in 2002-2003 and most cite Muhammed Ali as the first leader (or co-leader with Muhammed Yusuf).
Moreover, the al-Risalah article does not use the word "founder" in it, so it could imply Ali was the first "leader" and therefore also the founder since there are no leaders that the article mentions before him (it only mentions he had a "shaykh and mentor"). There are other sources that attest to Muhammed Ali's role as the founder or co-leader/co-founder with Muhammed Yusuf in 2002-2003 and the fact that he studied in Sudan in the 1990s, where he met Bin Laden and then trained in Afghanistan before 2002. [108]
Muhammed Ali was probably not as formal of an al-Qaida member as Ibrahim Harun. Harun, for example, pledged baya', or loyalty, to Bin Laden in Pakistan, and it is unclear if Ali did or just met Bin Laden in Sudan and received a promise of money from him and studied from the "scholars around Bin Laden" in Sudan. However, Ali still met Bin Laden in Sudan, was in Afghanistan, and was "radicalized by jihadi literature in Saudi Arabia" (according to Kyari Muhammed). [109]
I do not argue the money from al-Qaida members in the Arabian Peninsula was received by Muhammed Ali but that the money from al-Qaida was provided as part of the initial funding for Boko Haram and intended for Ali. The fact that Ali was even in contact with al-Qaida and that his "shaykh and mentor" received what is described as "immense wealth" from al-Qaida members in the Arabian Peninsula (before the shaykh and mentor apparently stole it) contributes to showing Ali was not a "homegrown" Nigerian jihadist but rather an al-Qaida operative. He returned to Nigeria around 2002 and was part of a strategy with al-Qaida to start a jihadi project in Nigeria. [110]
20. "The full picture of what happened at Kanamma will likely never be known, but to depict the Kanamma group as a one-dimensional 'jihadist training camp' is simplistic. Here, we would remind the reader that the real question is whether al-Qa'ida's involvement was the decisive factor in making Boko Haram and its antecedents lethal - and in this connection, we would remind the reader that the Kanamma uprising was a hasty, poorly planned maneuver that resulted in swift defeat, with leading militants killed in the aftermath and Muhammad Yusuf scurrying off to Saudi Arabia in an effort to save and later rehabilitate himself. Again, either al-Qa'ida was peripheral or its involvement was disastrous."
I argue in my Perspectives on Terrorism article that the Kanamma camp was founded to be a jihadist training camp and multiple sources at the time of Boko Haram's founding in 2002-2003 attest that there was amassing of weapons and covert military training by late 2003. The leaders of the group, such as Muhammed Ali, had a history with al-Qaida, as discussed previously. This does not discount that members also farmed and fished and some members were disgruntled university students or that many of them, according to reports at the time, were well-off and educated: one can be jihadist, a fisher/farmer and wealthy. At al-Qaida camps, one is also likely to find poetry, sports, and agricultural activities. Even if "the Kanamma uprising was a hasty, poorly planned maneuver that resulted in swift defeat" that does not affect my argument that al-Qaida still had a "significant impact" on Boko Haram in its founding years in 2002-2003. A number of al-Qaida attempted attacks have also been "poorly planned" or botched, such as the Nigerian "underwear bomber" for Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula on Christmas Day, 2010, but that does not mean al-Qaida did not have a "significant impact" on that attack.
I find Andrea Brigaglia's work to be the most in-depth on the Kanamma camp and my findings generally corroborate what he wrote, namely that the Kanamma camp was:
. not a "simple commune", as most scholars have believed, but was "a training camp for (al-Qaeda's?) militants" [sic] with;
. "international connections"; and
. was "possibly the first of its kind in Nigeria's history." [111]
Indeed, the fact the Kanamma camp was the "first of its kind in Nigeria's history" is why area studies scholars on Nigeria may have been "naïve" about Boko Haram: it was not something area studies scholars on Nigeria had ever seen on the country's territory before.
21. "First, it is worth emphasizing what Zenn only briefly mentions – that whereas Shekau was eager for AQIM's material assistance, he rejected Droukdel's advice on strategy. Droukdel explicitly advised Shekau not to declare a jihad, which Shekau did anyway."
I specifically write in my Perspectives on Terrorism article that "Shekau's July 2010 video showed, however, that he had already begun to disobey Droukdel's advice to not declare a jihad..."(italics added for emphasis). [112] I suppose this was "too brief a mention" for the five academics. This is nitpicking.
It was because Shekau "disobeyed" Droukdel, among other reasons, that AQIM shifted its support to Ansaru or "Ansaru-leaning" or "Ansaru-aligned" Boko Haram members by 2012. This is a key point that I make in my Perspectives on Terrorism article. [113]
22. "Second, there is no hard evidence linking Boko Haram's September 2010 attack on a Bauchi prison to the training and the 200,000 Euro transfer (and indeed, no concrete evidence about how and when that money was used) from AQIM to Boko Haram, much less to AQIM's orders."
The academics contradict themselves in their effort to launch attacks against me. Thurston himself argued in his book that, "In other words, the training and the funding [from AQIM] seem to have helped Boko Haram stage its Bauchi prison break in September of that year [2010]." [114]
Given the sophistication of the attack, such as the way the explosions detonated through the walls, it is likely Boko Haram received specialized training for the operation in Bauchi. AQIM should be considered as a likely trainer of some of the militants involved in it, just as Thurston stated. I never argued, however, that AQIM "ordered" the attack; since the academics imply I did, they are misrepresenting me.
23. "Third, Boko Haram's attacks in 2010 (both before and after the Bauchi incident) included many assassinations in the northeast, micro-incidents that relied on local members' hyper-local knowledge of where their targets lived and worked. These assassinations concentrated on local politicians, local Muslim leaders, and members of the security services."
I make clear that I generally do not attribute the assassinations in northeastern Nigeria to AQIM support to Boko Haram; rather what I attribute to AQIM and al-Shabab support is the suicide bombing campaign in 2011-2012. I wrote in my Perspectives on Terrorism article that:
"In the two years after Ansaru broke from Shekau in May 2011, the impact of the training with AQIM and al-Shabab was evidenced not through the attacks of Shekau's faction of Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria, which were mostly "self-generated", but through the suicide bombings and kidnappings of Ansaru and Ansaru-aligned militants in Boko Haram in the Middle Belt region" (italics added for emphasis). [115]
24. "Zenn's third 'case,' on suicide bombings in the Middle Belt, contains inaccuracies and his data would need to be carefully checked. Zenn has not published his data set (see endnote 64) and he does not mention the source of this data or the methods through which he compiled it. Is it from Nigerian media reports? The only suicide bombings he discusses here are the two well-known bombings from summer 2011 in Nigeria's capital Abuja and a bombing at a church in Madalla on Christmas Day 2011. When it comes to the bombings beyond Abuja and Madalla, can Zenn provide compelling evidence that all of these were suicide bombings? In the city of Jos (Plateau State), for example, there were several suicide bombings from 2012, but more of the bombings (starting on 24 December 2010) were not suicide attacks but involved car bombs or devices left in public places. Can we be sure Zenn has correctly catalogued the bombings in the Middle Belt, discerning which were suicide attacks and which were not? Moreover, some of these attacks were claimed by Boko Haram, but can Zenn prove that every attack was carried out by Boko Haram or Ansaru?"
I write in the footnotes in my Perspectives on Terrorism article I am more than willing to share or discuss my data set of suicide attacks from June 2011 until the end of 2012 to anyone who contacts me requesting it (none of the five academics bothered). It will be published in my separate response article to these academics in the June 2018 issue of Perspectives on Terrorism. The data set comes mostly from media reports and, according to the data set, 31 of the 36 attacks from June 2011 until the end of 2012 involved suicide bombings while five involved only car bombings (without a person inside). Some suicide bombings may have been misreported and were actually car bombings (without a driver/suicide bomber) while others were, in fact, suicide car bombings (person-in-car), such as where I wrote:
"... the AQIM- and al-Shabab-trained militants in Boko Haram were likely antagonistic to Shekau and closely aligned with Ansaru. One example of this is the case of the mastermind of a major suicide car bombing at a church outside of Abuja on Christmas Day 2011 that killed 41 people. This mastermind, Kabiru Sokoto, claimed in his court trial to have received a portion of $250,000 [200,000 euros] from "a group in Algeria"...."(italics added for emphasis). [116]
It is theoretically possible some other group did some of the suicide bombings, car bombings or suicide car bombings from June 2011 until the end of 2012 but the high rate of the suicide bombings—or what may have also been car bombings or suicide car bombings—attests to a rapid increase in Boko Haram's tactic capabilities starting in June 2011. It is unlikely common criminals carried out around 36 suicide bombings, car bombings or suicide car bombings in northern Nigeria in such a short amount of time after June 2011, especially because:
. there had virtually never been any reported suicide bombings, car bombings or suicide car bombings in northern Nigeria's history before June 2011;
. churches were a primary target during the suicide bombing/car bombing campaign, which AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel had instructed Boko Haram to target (others targets like telecommunications facilities and media houses were also distinctly Boko Haram targets); and
. the campaign began just one day after Boko Haram threatened in the media that its fighters came back from Somalia and would launch attacks. [117]
If Boko Haram, Ansaru, or Ansaru-aligned /Ansaru-leaning factions of Boko Haram did not carry out this suicide bombing and car bombing campaign, then the academics should reveal who they believe conducted these suicide bombings or car bombings from June 2011 until the end of 2012. In one chapter in a Pérouse de Montclos-edited online book about Boko Haram in 2015, Kyari Muhammed wrote that:
"The case of Lydia Joseph and the "Miya Barkate Eight" in Bauchi State indicate that some Christian elements also attack churches in the name of Boko Haram, especially in areas with a history of inter-religious violence, either to stir up discontent or to settle scores due to intra-religious disputes. On 29 August 2011, Lydia Joseph was apprehended while trying to burn St. John's Cathedral in Bauchi" (italics added for emphasis). [118]
Therefore, Kyari Muhammed argued "some Christian elements" have been responsible for alleged Boko Haram attacks on churches between June 2011 until the end of 2012 in Bauchi. However, according to the source he cited Lydia Joseph never claimed to be "attacking the church in the name of Boko Haram", and she only had kerosene and a lighter when she was stopped before entering the church. [119] In fact, the article Kyari Muhammed cites about Lydia Joseph is called "Police arrest prostitute over alleged attempt to burn down church" and has nothing to do with Boko Haram and does not mention Boko Haram at all. He either made up the Boko Haram angle of the Lydia Joseph story or he saw that angle on online chat forums that he did not cite but that exist online labelling Lydia Joseph as a Christian who carried out attacks in the name of Boko Haram and that include other anti-Christian conspiracy theories blaming Christians for Boko Haram attacks and other violence. [120] By representing those chat forums, which are completely unsourced, speculative and, frankly, a slander against Christians, in his book chapter as indicating "Christian elements also attack churches in the name of Boko Haram..." Kyari Muhammed furthered chat forum conspiracy theories in the academic domain, which is supposed to be a bastion of credibility. He therefore also provides no evidence that anyone other than Boko Haram was responsible for the suicide and car bombing campaign from June 2011 until the end of 2012.
One of the other five academics, Adam Higazi, also furthered this same conspiracy theory where he wrote in a separate 48-page book chapter on Boko Haram in 2015 that:
"For example, an unverified account I heard from a local resident in Sabon Garin Nabordo, Bauchi State, was that when Nigerian soldiers cleared an insurgent camp in the savanna bush behind the town in March 2015, people from different ethnicities were discovered within it, including Hausa, Fulani, and even Igbo. There were several cases in 2011-12 in Jos, Gombe and Bauchi of Christians caught with explosives attempting to bomb their own churches, having been paid to do so by Boko Haram" (italics added for emphasis). [121]
He is therefore making a claim – without providing any evidence – that not only in Bauchi but also in Jos and Gombe there have been "several cases of Christians caught with explosives attempting to bomb their own churches" and that they "have been paid to do so by Boko Haram." Higazi provides no sources for this claim anywhere in his article or in the relevant footnote. He does, however, say in a separate footnote in his book chapter that Kyari Muhammed provided "a superb overview" of Boko Haram in the book chapter in which he made the false claim about Lydia Joseph. Higazi may have learned this supposed information about Christians attacking their churches "after being paid by Boko Haram" from Kyari Muhammed. [122]
Two academics who lament the problem of how Boko Haram "generates all sorts of conspiracy theories" have produced two academic works on Boko Haram with unsourced claims about Christians bombing their own churches in the name of Boko Haram or after being paid by Boko Haram in Bauchi, Jos and Gombe. [123] This does not discount that there theoretically may have been Christians who bombed churches "in the name of Boko Haram" or who were "paid by Boko Haram". However, these two academics provide no evidence of it and they are contributing to conspiracy theories in the academic domain that formerly existed in online chat forums. It is one thing for anonymous people on online chat forums to make such claims without evidence; it is another thing for academics to elevate the voice of such claims in their published works without evidence—and Higazi, Kyari Muhammed and Pérouse de Montclos should hold themselves to a higher standard if they want to be deemed credible.
25. "Zenn's knowledge of this region is highly superficial, as shown by his definition of the Middle Belt."
This is nitpicking.
In the slightly more specialist-driven article in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism in 2018, I defined the Middle Belt more broadly as:
"Nigeria's "Middle Belt" is populated by diverse ethnic and linguistic groups and is where the majority Muslim northern Nigeria and majority Christian southern Nigeria meet. It can include Kwara, Kogi State, Benue, Taraba, Plateau, Nasarawa, Niger, Adamawa, Abuja, and the southern parts of Kaduna, Kebbi, Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe, and Borno. This article adopts the expansive definition of Middle Belt, but does not include Yobe, Borno, or Adamawa...." [124]
Resolving the definition of the Middle Belt can be done in dispassionate scholarly discussions.
26. "Even with terrible bombings in Jos, Kaduna, FCT, Kano, Bauchi and elsewhere, it was Muslims and Christians in the north-eastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa who were by far the worst affected by Boko Haram attacks, in terms of the number of fatalities and the number of mosques and churches destroyed."
I agree. My article specifically makes the point that the training provided by AQIM and al-Shabab to Boko Haram did not necessarily cause the most deaths and did not necessarily lead to the most frequent attacks in Nigeria. [125] However, from a 'perspective on terrorism', despite fewer deaths resulting from the Boko Haram attacks related to AQIM or al-Shabab training, they were still the more high-profile attacks and delivered the political message to the Nigerian and international audience that Boko Haram was seeking to convey about its jihad: that is what terrorism is all about. The day-to-day smaller-scale and less "media-worthy" attacks in northeastern Nigeria may still have affected more people and had a greater impact on the "unity" of Nigeria, as the academics note, but also had less impact in terms of the political messaging that terrorist violence conveys.
27. "One of us has dealt critically, elsewhere, with the claims of Boko Haram and Ansaru training and fighting in Mali. But in any case, Zenn's contention about Ansaru's reintegration into Boko Haram is undermined by some of the jihadist sources he cites - the above-mentioned al-Risalah essay, for example, makes no mention of any reintegration."
It was discussed previously in Rebuttal #5 how Ansaru leaders and members reintegrated with Boko Haram. I also elaborated in greater depth on Ansaru members' reintegration into Boko Haram and distinguished "Ansaru" and "Ansaru-aligned" members of Boko Haram in a separate article in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism in February 2018. [126] I also address the motivations of Ansaru members to reintegrate with Boko Haram in that article. [127] Mostly secondary sources (not "jihadist sources") were used to make the argument about Ansaru members' reintegration with Boko Haram. The al-Risalah article did not mention the re-integration perhaps because Ansaru's leader does not want to acknowledge losing members back to Boko Haram, such as Ansaru's former commander of suicide operations, Abu Fatima. There is nothing inconsistent with the argument that Ansaru members reintegrated into Boko Haram and the Ansaru leader not mentioning it in one article.
I have also dealt critically with the claims of Boko Haram and Ansaru fighting in Mali in an article in January 2014 in African Arguments called "Nigerians in Gao: was Boko Haram really active in Northern Mali?". [128] I also address the issue with more updated evidence in the Studies in Conflict and Terrorism article in February 2018.
28. "Al-Qa'ida's and AQIM's support for the early Boko Haram was intermittent at best, and AQIM appears to have played no role in Boko Haram's uprising. Moreover, amid its leaders' own arguments with each other in 2012, AQIM never bragged in its internal correspondence about any successes it believed it had achieved vis-à-vis Nigeria.... For those analysts, like Zenn, who want to hold up AQIM as the dominant factor in explaining Boko Haram's rise and behavior, the question of why AQIM did not do more for Boko Haram should be answered."
This is another misrepresentation. I do not use the words "dominant factor" but rather argue al-Qaida (and AQIM and al-Shabab) "empowered" Boko Haram in a "significant" way with "funding, training and advice" for its founding in 2002-2003, its launch of jihad in 2009-2010 and its campaign of suicide bombings in 2011-2012. [129] I also do not argue AQIM was "dominant" in "explaining" Boko Haram's "behavior", however one defines that term, but rather specifically that AQIM was influential in Boko Haram's founding, launch of jihad, and suicide bombings. Nor did I argue AQIM was necessarily involved in Boko Haram's "uprising" in July 2009. The five academics carelessly put words into my mouth.
The rift with AQIM and Shekau escalated in mid-2011, so it makes sense AQIM would not write about Shekau in 2012, considering they were no longer coordinating with him and their relationship ebbed. If Shekau was in Mali in 2012 I argue in my Studies in Conflict and Terrorism article that he was likely with a sub-faction like Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), which itself had its own rifts with AQIM. [130] The evidence of Shekau in Mali can be debated but it is also important to recognize that if AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel could get into Mali in 2012, as reported, with few security forces noticing him, then presumably Shekau could too. [131]
Why did AQIM not mention Ansaru, other attacks in Nigeria (UN suicide bombing, for example), or even their bad experiences in Nigeria with Shekau in their internal correspondences in 2012? Perhaps they did, but we do not have those documents; or Nigeria might not have been a priority for AQIM in 2012 relative to other pressing issues at the time in Mauritania, Mali, post-Arab Spring Tunisia and of course Algeria. There are completely legitimate reasons why in the several letters journalists found from AQIM in Mali in 2012 neither Abubakar Shekau nor Nigeria, Boko Haram or Ansaru were mentioned. Yet these five authors make an unprofessional and unscholarly ad hominem attack against me where they argue that I made a "deliberate attempt to mislead the non-specialist reader" about AQIM-Boko Haram ties when AQIM's several internal documents from 2012 do not mention Boko Haram.
And AQIM did "do more" for Boko Haram than what I discussed in my Perspectives on Terrorism article, such as its predecessor, the GSPC, helping the group to escape from the Kanamma camp clashes in Yobe State in 2004 and AQIM supporting Boko Haram's media development in 2010-2011, but my article focused on AQIM's impact on only three phases: Boko Haram's founding, launch of jihad and campaign of suicide bombings. Moreover, in addition to the training, funding, arms and advising (which Shekau rejected) that AQIM provided Boko Haram from August 2009 until the rift between AQIM/Ansaru and Shekau in mid-2011, how much more should AQIM have provided Boko Haram to satisfy the academics? The 200,000 euros and training to Boko Haram, let alone donation of arms mentioned in the primary source documents, was sufficient at least for Shekau to write a letter to AQIM "thanking" the group for the "training and financial generosity" at the time.
29. "Zenn has been keen to point out instances where we revised some of our early skepticism about Boko Haram's interactions with AQIM. But is it not normal scholarly practice to update one's understanding as new evidence emerges? Zenn, in contrast, has had to overlook profound gaps, contradictions, and challenges to his own assertions in order to argue the same thing in 2017 that he argued in 2013."
In a response where these academics are arguing without providing evidence that I misrepresent them, it is interesting they misrepresent me again and say I "argue the same thing in 2017 that [I] argued in 2013." One can find in August 2012 that I co-wrote an article called "Boko Haram is no African al-Qaida." It said:
"there is no evidence tying Boko Haram to al-Qaida central or the broader jihadi community on an operational level." [133]
Soon after this, I conducted more rigorous research and analysis and viewed new evidence and "updated my understanding", as reflected in my work since late 2012, which argues there is evidence tying Boko Haram to al-Qaida and the broader jihadi community. If I have not significantly "updated my understanding" on AQIM support to Boko Haram in the 2009-2010 period since 2013 specifically, it is because what I argued since then has turned out to be correct, unlike what Thurston argued when he wrote in 2011 that Boko Haram members in the Nigerian army were "more likely" to have provided training to Boko Haram than AQIM. [134]
Other than Thurston's "updating his understanding" on AQIM's ties to Boko Haram from being "not serious" in 2011 to "marginal" in 2016 to "perhaps not decisive" in 2018, have the other academics "updated their understanding"? I have not pointed to instances where anyone who wrote against me except for Thurston "updated" their prior skepticism on al-Qaida/AQIM ties to Boko Haram because, to my knowledge, the other academics have not done so, which is seen in their latest published works and article against me that still expresses skepticism and downplays ties between AQIM and Boko Haram. For example, in their article they say that "all that the primary sources have conclusively shown about the post-2009 period is that some training occurred (the numbers are not yet known), and 200,000 euros may have been transferred"—a major downplaying of those documents and still showing skepticism about AQIM-Boko Haram ties.
It is not clear to me whether, for example, Pérouse de Montclos still argues like he did in 2015 that "apart from some individual contacts, [Boko Haram's leaders] have never coordinated with groups claiming Osama bin Laden's mantle." [135] Anyone who reads the primary source documents along with corroborative secondary sources will see that there was coordination in financing, arms, training and strategy between AQIM and Boko Haram and that AQIM coordinated with Ansaru separately on its kidnappings in Nigeria, including of the German engineer in Kano in March 2012 discussed in Rebuttal #4. This does not mean Pérouse de Montclos' regional-historical approach in some of his articles cannot be useful but rather that he has been off the mark on claims related to AQIM and Boko Haram and Boko Haram's regional and international linkages and he does not appear to have "updated" his incorrect claims.
I also argued in my report on Boko Haram for The Jamestown Foundation in November 2012 that:
"In late 2003, the Yobe State Council ordered the Nigerian militants to leave their "Afghanistan" base in Kanamma Village. In response to this, 200 members of the Nigerian Taliban attacked the residences of local government heads, regional officials, and the divisional police in Kanamma and Geidam in Yobe State, killing several policemen and stealing police weapons and vehicles. However, the military contained the attack, killed 18 militants, arrested a number of other members, and destroyed the "Afghanistan" base. After that battle, many Nigerian militants retreated into Nigeria's border regions or went into hiding in Nigeria, rendering the Nigerian Taliban dormant as a militant group, but active as an underground proselytizing group." [136]
I did not mention al-Qaida at all, let alone AQIM's predecessors, in discussing Boko Haram in its founding years in 2002-2003. Indeed, I have viewed new evidence since November 2012 that leaders of the "Nigerian Taliban" (a name for Boko Haram in 2003) like Muhammed Ali had backgrounds in al-Qaida and contacts to al-Qaida and AQIM's predecessor in 2002-2003. In fact, it was only after reading Andrea Brigaglia's work in 2016 that for the first time I "updated my understanding" and argued that al-Qaida had a "significant impact" on Boko Haram's founding in 2002-2003 in my Perspectives on Terrorism article in 2017. [137] This is not a position I held in 2013, let alone as late as 2016. This shows these five academics' incorrect claim that I have not "updated my understandings" is likely a deliberate attempt to mislead the non-specialist reader or a reflection of them not doing their due diligence and evidence collection before writing ad hominem attacks.
The academics' argument that I have long held some "agenda" to present Boko Haram as a "global threat" is baseless; in fact, I used to view Boko Haram in a way similar to them. Before I "updated my understanding" about Boko Haram, they had no problem with my work and one of them even singled me out for praise in 2013 for my bringing forth new primary sources on Boko Haram's sermons. [138] But now that I am a "key voice with substantial influence" and "updated my understanding" and brought forth primary sources that challenge their still largely unchanged understandings, they have a problem with my work. [139] This is telling about what their real aims are in making multiple personal attacks against me for the past few years since 2013—gatekeeping and groupthink.
In November 2018, Kyari Muhammed's book chapter on "The Origins of Boko Haram" will be published in "The Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics", which is edited by A. Carl LeVan and Patrick Ukata. [140] In that chapter, we will see whether he adds nuance to or "updates his understanding" from his former arguments that Boko Haram "went underground" in 2009 and simply "remarkably resurfaced" in 2010 (with no mention of AQIM) and that Boko Haram "emerged as a home-grown group with local grievances." [141] Considering the new sources now available, Kyari Muhammed's chapter will be an interesting test for their claim that some of them have "updated their understanding".
30. "And, to top it off, if the reader remains unconvinced about the problems with Zenn's analysis, we challenge the reader to assess Zenn's record of predictions about Boko Haram and Nigeria. None of us claims to have a crystal ball, but neither have we been so egregiously wrong as Zenn - whether it comes to predicting Boko Haram's imminent rapprochement with al-Qa'ida and the potential for the Malian jihadist leader Hamadou Kouffa to lead a Nigerian-Malian alliance of ethnically Fulani jihadists (a forecast Zenn and a co-author made in 2016)."
.In a response where these academics argue without evidence I that misrepresent them, it is interesting they misrepresent me yet again. For one, my co-author and I did not predict "imminent" Boko Haram-al-Qaida/AQIM rapprochement. Why they added the word "imminent" that we did not use seems to be a dishonest attempt by them to overplay what a co-author and I wrote. Moreover, our article in Foreign Policy was not a "prediction," let alone an "egregious prediction" as the five authors claim it was. Rather our article contended that "al Qaida has contested the Islamic State's encroachments on its territory through a combination of military force, intelligence work, crafty propaganda, and effective coalition building" and that because ISWAP was facing military setbacks in Nigeria in 2016, al-Qaida may seek to contest the Islamic State's encroachment in Nigeria and win back elements of Boko Haram/ISWAP to al-Qaida, AQIM or its Mali-based sub-affiliates. [142]
There may be a difference between academic fora and an article that presents a threat assessment for an online policy publication such as Foreign Policy. In considering future events it is worth assessing multiple possibilities. When Boko Haram was struggling to hold territory after its pledge to the Islamic State in March 2015, there were reasons to believe it could coordinate with AQIM again; and there still is. We stand by our forecast and consider it relevant to explore the possibilities of Boko Haram elements defecting to or mixing with AQIM elements, such as in Nigeria or Niger, even if it does not happen, because it could affect targeting strategy and various other contingencies in Nigeria. [143] Similarly, it would have been relevant to explore the issue of AQIM ties to Boko Haram in 2009, and then it did happen, even though these academics predicted it would not happen. [144]
My approach over the years, in contrast to these five academics, has not been to cherry-pick from the works of those who oppose my point of view and lambast them for their worst predictions in their years of writing, such as where Thurston in 2011 "ruled out" the possibility of AQIM or Boko Haram/Ansaru kidnapping operations in Nigeria and claimed that same year that Boko Haram members in the Nigerian army were "more likely" to train Boko Haram than AQIM. [145] My approach has been to try and engage the stronger and more current arguments of my adversaries and not point out all the examples where those like Thurston have made predictions that have been "egregiously wrong". The approach of the five academics in their attempted critique and of Thurston with his misrepresentations of my work in his book does nothing to advance the field. Ultimately, their approach will also not advance their careers if that is their desired goal because their unscholarly practices can be exposed.
The Glass House
In the previous section I have shown examples of how the five academics wrote an attack piece and dressed it up as an attempt to appear as scholarship. [146] In this section, I will first explain why what these five academics wrote was an unprofessional, unscholarly and likely also unethical way of dealing with differences over analysis and methodology and interpretations of militant groups. [147]
Second, I will provide a sampling of some of my original contributions to the field, which I argue benefit those who study Boko Haram and the area studies and terrorism studies fields more broadly.
Third, I will discuss some of the five authors' own writings and provide cases of how they engage in groupthink. One of the symptoms of groupthink is viewing me – especially because they find I have become a "key voice with substantial influence" – as a "rival" instead of someone who has a dissenting, or competing, point of view. [148] This will demonstrate the importance of allowing room for multiple viewpoints, so as to prevent a mutually self-citing academic clique enforcing a certain line of analysis on any topic in any field.
Unscholarly and Unprofessional
One of the allegations the five authors make against me is that I connect too many dots on the jihadist connections that Boko Haram has to al-Qaida. In contrast, as I have shown, they downplay al-Qaida's impact in Nigeria by using words like "possibly" for attacks where the evidence leaves no doubt that Ansaru carried them out and AQIM claimed them. Yet, they break their paradigm of downplaying ties when it comes to me, where they—with literally zero evidence provided—find far-reaching relationships, make assumptive leaps and allege I "align with powerful interests in Nigeria" and perhaps even the Republican Party in the United States. [149] This is telling of their intentions in targeting me.
The most positive comment they could muster for their article was, "Even if some of Zenn's publications have had more thorough scholarly trappings...." [150] As mentioned above, a scholar uninvolved in this affair recently posted a message with advice that could have benefitted them where he wrote, "while completing a review for a journal, I find myself going back over what I wrote to make sure I am critical, not condescending; helpful, not hurtful; direct, not demeaning. It is possible to move the discipline forward.... Can we do this more often?" [151] For five individuals who claim the mantle to being "scholars" and label me – with a juris doctorate, graduate studies, several published academics articles and dozens of other articles, 10 spoken languages, field research on six continents and several years international work – as a "non-scholar" [152] among other accusations, is it not a responsibility for them to present a balanced assessment?
Another reason why what they wrote is unscholarly is through examining responses to it. Few, if any, have highlighted new things they learned from their article or key analytical disagreements between us that can move the field forward, and nobody influential in the academic community has endorsed it. Moreover, one of the members of their academic clique, who exemplifies their "in-group" thinking, wrote that these five authors are "unimpeachable"—meaning "cannot be doubted, questioned or criticized, entirely trustworthy"—which is the exact opposite of what the academic enterprise is about. As I demonstrated in the previous section, even the most experienced and highest regarded scholars in the field have been incorrect and should not be considered "unimpeachable," let alone these five authors who, as I have shown, misrepresented my work in numerous instances, made a number of patently incorrect and unsourced assessments, and have made a number of wrong predictions.
One of the features of a hit piece, especially when it takes five to gang up against one, is to signal to people unfamiliar with the matter that the larger side must be right and represent the majority opinion – and perhaps make people who disagree with them fear to speak up or counter their ideas, knowing they risk bearing the brunt of a future hit piece or other forms of academic or professional bullying. Despite this, their article will not succeed because the sources in my articles are transparent, and there will inevitably be more challenges to the narrative that this academic clique seeks to enforce. Eventually another scholar will become "a key voice with substantial influence" and challenge their narrative. According to the findings of one study, when "victims" of groupthink make unsubstantiated personal attacks against someone else who holds a different point of view, it is usually an indication that they see their own views are growing "defective", so in a last ditch effort they become "more intolerant" and try to destroy the "rival" rather than engage in substantive discourse. [153] This appears to be the case with these five academics. Now that growing evidence weighs against them they have become more aggressive in repressing analysis that counters their arguments: their prime target is the one they define as "a key voice with substantial influence."
A careful reading of their article and the way their clique has employed it also shows that they misrepresented my work to harm my reputation, and now they want to share their article with others who will skim it uncritically and accept it at face-value and stop publishing my work. I would argue, on the contrary, dissenting and minority views – that, for example, Boko Haram is more the product of a global phenomenon than local phenomena – should be given extra weight by the field to protect from the groupthink of those like these five academics.
It is also interesting that members of the Boko Haram/Sahel research community such as these five academics exhibit many of the same characteristics of the splintering and factionalization of the non-state groups they claim to study: it shows group dynamics are as inherent to academia as much as to non-state groups. But how can these five academics claim the right to work on conflict resolution for others when this is the best way they handle disagreements within their field?
My Contributions
As noted previously, the five academics say I have become a "key voice with substantial influence." If that is true, then it is because of my unique contributions to the field. Below is a sample of such contributions, especially in the area of contributing new sources that shed new light on parts of Boko Haram's—but also other militant groups'—history that were previously considered to be either unchallenged consensus (such as Boko Haram being "homegrown" and "peaceful" at its founding) or the equivalent of research "black holes" (such as how Boko Haram communicated with the Islamic State before Abubakar Shekau's baya' to Abubakr al-Baghdadi in March 2015). Among others, my recent contributions include:
1. Locating and downloading the Arabic language memoir of a North Africa Islamic State media activist and former AQIM poet, Shaybah al-Hamad, who describes how and why he became the liaison to Boko Haram for Islamic State, which would otherwise be lost to history (or extremely hard to find). We might never know how the relationship between the Islamic State and Boko Haram was crafted if not for this document. I have discussed Shaybah al-Hamad in an article called "A Biography of Boko Haram and the Bay'a to al-Baghdadi" in a special issue of the CTC Sentinel in March 2015 and another article called "Wilayat West Africa Reboots for the Caliphate" for CTC Sentinel in August 2015. [154] A large portion of al-Hamad's memoir as well as the messages between Boko Haram and Shaybah al-Hamad have rarely been have seen, let alone in English translation, but excerpts will be featured in the book, "Boko Haram Reader: From Nigerian Preachers to the Islamic State," that is being released in July 2018. [155] These primary sources provide clues as to which factional leader's loyalists in 2015— Shekau or Abu Mus'ab al-Barnawi—were talking to Islamic State before March 2015 and, of course, scholars can—and should—discuss how credible the memoir is; how much the former al-Hamad may be concealing or exaggerating; and how al-Hamad knew this information. [156]
2. Obtaining six letters of correspondence through examining court documents from the trial of an al-Qaida member from Niger, Ibrahim Harun, who some of al-Qaida's highest level operatives in Pakistan sent to Nigeria in 2003 to plan attacks with Boko Haram, which otherwise the academic community may never see. [157] I showed some documents to an iconic scholar on al-Qaida whose specialty is not Boko Haram, but she was struck by the level of operational security and strategic thinking that al-Qaida revealed in the letters, which she considered "ahead of its time." Others who focus on jihadi culture might be interested in the discussion of al-Qaida's advice to the member from Niger on whether he should marry. Even scholars on Central Asia may benefit from the discussion in the letters of Uzbeks and Uighurs who died in Pakistan or key al-Qaida couriers who were arrested in Iraq, and the battlefield mistake the Uzbeks made that caused their deaths in Pakistan.
3. Analysis of Boko Haram's social media, especially the details of the group's Arabic, English, French and Hausa twitter postings in the weeks before it pledged baya' to the Islamic State in March 2015. No other academics have screenshotted those posts, which are now obviously taken down by Twitter and lost to history, nor has anyone analyzed them and published on them. There are factional clues within the messaging of those tweets that are relevant for helping us to understand "how Boko Haram works" and "how the Islamic State works", some of which I discuss in my Studies in Conflict and Terrorism article in February 2018. [158]
Many of the sources I collect and analyze, including the sample of three above, are helpful not only for Boko Haram researchers but also for terrorism studies researchers and area studies researchers. However, the sources and analysis that I introduce are an inconvenient challenge to those who have consistently argued Boko Haram is the product of "local" phenomena. These academics' attitude toward such documentary sources was reflected in one of them writing off analysis based on them as "stories from Michael Moore" [159]- as though ad hominem attacks on other scholars could negate the best available evidence that actually displays the internal dynamics of the group that these academics purport to want to explain. They dismiss such evidence at their own peril.
At this point, it is relevant for me to ask why they allege conspiratorial intentions of me, where they portray me as "aligned with powerful interests in Nigeria", as if Nigerian agents are providing me with the information in my analyses. If you scrutinize the 187 footnotes in my Studies in Conflict and Terrorism article from February 2018 not one source is "anonymous" or reliant on intelligence services, and I cite myself only one time out of 187 footnotes—a co-written article in footnote 156. Moreover, the analytical conclusions in the article are all derived from rigorously assessing fully open sources. [160] The same evaluation of footnotes and analysis can be applied to my Perspectives on Terrorism article under the microscope here. [161]
Anyone who is familiar with the editorial standards of CTC Sentinel will know it seeks to be a "gold standard" for sourcing and credibility. One first-time author for the Sentinel, for example, said of his experience with the publication in May 2018 that, "I cannot stress the rigidity of editorial standards at the CTC which not only ensures analytical rigidity but also ensures that both the author [and] the publication itself is protected from claims of poor research methodology or partisanship with academic circles." [162] Is there any way I could publish in the Sentinel 13 times since 2011, including three cover articles, as well as edit a multi-authored report on Boko Haram in March 2018, except for me accurately attributing my work and being a specialist? [163]
These five academics wrote in their article, "We hope that this response will encourage reflection on the part of security studies scholars about whose work they consider rigorous and whose they do not." [164] I encourage people to take them up on that offer.
These five academics have used accusations and smear campaigns against me as a way to explain away and discredit my hard work, possibly win themselves some opportunities where employers may otherwise look in my direction, and to maintain their narrative as the dominant one. But this is what highlights the difference between their clique and real world application. When one of these academics called a certain European country's embassy in Nigeria in 2015 regarding my job analyzing Boko Haram's organizational structure, the country's diplomats, who were working to support negotiations to save the lives of schoolchildren, were not influenced by any of the false accusations made against me. When those with skin-in-the-game have needed analysis to save lives, the record shows they have chosen my work, not theirs.
Lastly, it seems these five academics are not familiar with my work in the first place where they portray me as seeking to exclusively promote an international agenda. I have also written on gender issues, regional-historiographic themes, and issues affecting children, such as:
. "Women, gender and the evolving tactics of Boko Haram", co-written in the Journal of Terrorism Research only two months before the Chibok kidnapping took place in April 2014 (a clear warning sign had anyone been reading); [165]
. "The Boko Haram Paradox: Ethnicity, Religion, and Historical Memory in Pursuit of a Caliphate" in African Security in 2016 (co-written); [166] and
. a long exposé on the behind-the-scenes negotiations in the Dapchi and Chibok kidnappings for the CTC Sentinel in March 2018, which mentioned al-Qaida but three times in an article of 4,000-plus words. [167]
In fact, they seem to only have a problem with my articles on the international dimension of Boko Haram and highlight those articles for censure, but certainly my sources and methods must be similar for my articles on "local" themes. Or do only the latter articles pass muster in their book because they conform to the narrative they seek to enforce that Boko Haram is a "local" phenomenon?
A Glimpse into the Glass House
Since these academics attempt to convince others that the flaws they allege of my work mean I should not be respected in the field, then presumably they are not guilty of the same flaws, so that when they lead the field work on Boko Haram they will not exhibit such flaws. However, when I reviewed their most recent journal articles and book chapters I found they too commit these flaws. The following shows some of their lack of sourcing, bias, cherry-picking, speculation, failing to examine or cite contradictory sources, and, most importantly, groupthink.
1. Lack of sourcing
In Pérouse de Montclos' recent journal article for Small Wars and Insurgencies in August 2016, he includes only one footnote for the entire text below [168]:
"The criminalization of Boko Haram also brings to mind the looting of Borno by Rabeh, a warlord more interested in pillage than in Mahadist doctrine at the very end of the nineteenth century. As early as July 2009, the sect was joined by thugs of the 'Ecomog' militia mobilized by Borno governor Ali Modu Shariff to win the regional elections in April 2003 and 2007. These youths, who lived in the Gidan Yashi area of Abbaganaram, very near to the religious center (markaz) of Mohamed Yusuf in Maiduguri, were motivated by money more than jihad. Since then, the insurgents also got connected with the armed robbers (zargina) of Northern Cameroon who engage in local kidnapping, smuggling, poaching in the Waza Game Reserve, and trafficking drugs such as Tramadol. In the same vein, the group attracted opportunist 'mercenaries' who were not considered Muslims, especially the Buduma of Lake Chad islands. On the other hand, the sect failed to convert Hausa fish traders, probably because the latter thought they were already Islamized and refused to pay a religious tax to the insurgents. Known for their attacks on travelers and their border trafficking, the Buduma are a non-Kanuri minority occasionally called Yedina or Kouri (from the word for their oxen). [footnote 19, "In 1897, the explorer Emile Gentil already mentioned them as pirates. Cf. Dion, Vers le lac Tchad, 157."] They are well-versed in boat transport, raising livestock, and, to a lesser degree, fishing. Some of them joined Boko Haram to escape army raids, to take control of the fishing trade, and to get rid of the competition of Hausa 'immigrants' who came to Lake Chad in the 1970s. From this point of view, their determination to fight reveals not so much religious fanaticism as the necessity to make a living, together with the fear of being captured alive and tortured to death in prison, without any possibility of surrender.
Meanwhile, Boko Haram continued to recruit combatants because of the brutality of the military. Abuses by security forces are crucial for understanding the development of the sect."
While it's clear from this that Pérouse de Montclos' thinks ideology is not so important to Boko Haram, he could have limited his speculation by providing sources and data to corroborate his claims about all of the above. For example, where is the evidence that the zargina in Cameroon joined Boko Haram and that "Hausa fish traders" did not join Boko Haram or that the "youths who lived in the Gidan Yashi area of Abbaganaram, very near to the religious center (markaz) of Mohamed Yusuf in Maiduguri, were motivated by money more than jihad"? Did he, for example, conduct a survey or interview people there and, if so, why the lack of sourcing? Moreover, where are his sources about the Buduma joining Boko Haram to "get rid of the competition of Hausa 'immigrants'" to Lake Chad? And how are his broad-brush generalizations about the Buduma people, who are "known for their attacks on travelers and their border trafficking", acceptable?
In another body of text in the same article Pérouse de Montclos glosses over any regional context to downplay Boko Haram's links beyond Nigeria. Here is Pérouse de Montclos' explanation for Boko Haram from 2009 to 2011 in that same article. And to be clear: there is not one citation at all in the excerpt below, while the "appendix" he mentions, which included Boko Haram leader profiles—several of whom I had never heard of—is unsourced are unverifiable. He writes:
"The military crackdown in 2009 inaugurated a new period and exacerbated the sense of persecution of the sect. Chased from the cities, the movement went underground and fled into the countryside [my insertion: did any Boko Haram members retreat to the Sahel or is that information being conveniently left out here?]. In Maiduguri, Boko Haram houses were destroyed, sold, given to informers, or confiscated by district heads. Survivors sought revenge for the seizure of their goods and the murder of their relatives. With just a motorbike and an old gun, some started in 2010 to target and kill collaborators of the Borno State governor, Ali Modu Sherif, who was alleged to be very corrupt [my insertion: what about the suicide bombing campaign beginning in 2010?]. After the brief interim leadership of Mallam Sanni Umaru, Abubakar Shekau also emerged and adopted terrorist methods such as suicide attacks and car bombings outside Borno. The 'hawks' thus took up the lead against the 'doves', who were killed by the security forces or the most radical elements in the group (see appendix). Through its brutality, the Nigerian army itself contributed to Boko Haram's recruitment. Abuse by security forces gave rise to sympathy for the victims, albeit not a true adhesion to the ideology of the sect. In spite of his total opposition to the ideas professed by Mohammed Yusuf, for example, an Izala sheikh from Sokoto, Abubakar Gero Argungu, said publicly that the members of Boko Haram killed in 2009 could be considered Muslim martyrs; following this declaration during Ramadan celebrations in Yola in 2010, his mediation was accepted by the insurgents in 2011."
While it's true he again does not think ideology is important—although as discussed in Rebuttal #3 his knowledge of Boko Haram ideology may be limited by his lack of exploring contradictory sources—where is the evidence for what he wrote in the above excerpt, including that Boko Haram accepted Abubakar Gero Argungu's mediation? The group is known to have accepted mediation by Sheikh Ibrahim Datti Ahmed and Abdullahi Diyar and a few others, such as Ahmed Salkida and Zanna Mustapha. [169] One can compare the sourcing in his entire article to the sourcing in my Perspectives on Terrorism article that his academic group ridicules.
2. Cherry-picking and failing to transparently report the biases of sources
In an effort to downplay Boko Haram's links to al-Qaida or AQIM in his article, Pérouse de Montclos cherry-picks evidence to only not show links to al-Qaida or AQIM, just as in the above excerpt where he said, "chased from the cities, the movement went underground and fled into the countryside" without mentioning that dozens of them went to Mali or even Somalia after 2009.
For example, while discussing Al-Muntada Trust Fund in that journal article and denying its role in funding Boko Haram, he cited to the Al-Muntada Trust Fund's lawyer's own statement that the Trust did not fund Boko Haram (obviously an impartial source!) and a book by a journalist Mike Smith that referred to that same lawyer's statement. However, Pérouse de Montclos does not cite evidence showing that Al-Muntada Trust Fund may have been involved in funding Boko Haram, such as three articles on the subject by scholar on West Africa intellectual history, Andrea Brigaglia, or the book by one of the foremost scholars on Islam in West Africa, Ousmane Kane. Kane said Al-Muntada Trust Fund "may have played a role in training jihadis" in Nigeria. Nor did Pérouse de Montclos cite allegations reported in Nigerian media from as early as 2002 by Sufi groups that al-Muntada Trust Fund was funding an "al-Muntada camp" in Nigeria that would "soon cause a crisis" (likely referring to the Kanamma camp). [170] The Al-Muntada Trust Fund's own Sudanese director in 2004 admitted paying money to a businessman who then paid money to Boko Haram but the director said it was only "a loan". [171] Was Pérouse de Montclos failing to examine contradictory sources and his own source's bias because it might show Boko Haram received money from outside of Nigeria?
In another example of not citing contradictory sources (and downplaying Boko Haram's ties to al-Qaida), Pérouse de Montclos wrote, again without any citation, in that article:
"accusations made against Mohammed Ashafa, a follower of Boko Haram arrested in Kano in 2006, failed to prove that he received money from the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, the GSPC (Groupe salafiste pour la prédication et le combat), to recruit and train 21 combatants at a place called Agwan in Niger State." [172]
However, in 2012 news reports showed Ashafa was arrested in Pakistan for his ties to al-Qaida:
"The State Security Service, SSS, yesterday, narrated how an alleged link-man between the Boko Haram Islamic sect and the Al-Qaida terrorist network, Mallam Mohammed Ashafa, was apprehended by the Pakistani government through the National Intelligence Agency, NIA, and handed over to the Federal Government for prosecution." [173]
Thus, another example of cherry-picking is that he fails to mention the main allegation against Ashafa: that he was Ibrahim Harun's Boko Haram courier to al-Qaida in Pakistan, not the GSPC claim. Did Pérouse de Montclos leave that information out because the sources contradicted what he wanted to believe was true, or did he want to downplay Ashafa's links or believe Ashafa was arrested in Pakistan on vacation? For the record, I obtained through searching court documents in the Ibrahim Harun case a very high-level al-Qaida member's letter about Ashafa talking about Ashafa's training with al-Qaida in Pakistan. Rather than showing both sides of contradictory sources, Pérouse de Montclos only shows only one side of the sources that help make his point that Boko Haram was "local". Moreover, Pérouse de Montclos' claim that failure to convict Ashafa is evidence of his innocence is tantamount to claiming all failures to convict in Nigerian courts are evidence of the innocence of anyone formally charged: this is not only a claim no solicitor, barrister or judge would ever make, but also elevates Nigerian courts to a standard that does not exist anywhere in the world. As noted in my Perspectives on Terrorism article, pressure from Islamist groups against terrorism convictions in 2007 was among the reasons why Ashafa was not convicted in addition to Ashafa's ill health and Nigeria's desire to avoid being seen as a "terrorist haven" by convicting terrorists. [174]
Beyond that issue, the above excerpt from Pérouse de Montclos' article exhibits another major flaw. With more knowledge of West Africa or the GSPC Pérouse de Montclos would have asked, "how could an Algerian-led group like the GSPC have had a camp in the early 2000s "at a place called Agwan in Niger State" in the center of Nigeria?" Had he explored further, he likely would have come to the more reasonable – and correct assessment – that Agwan (also spelled "Agawane") is in the Republic of Niger and near the border with Mali. That is where Muhammed Ashafa was alleged to have sent Kanamma camp members for training, not Niger State, Nigeria, as Pérouse de Montclos wrongly claimed. Now consider how much they nitpicked on my definition of the "Middle Belt": will they now say Pérouse de Montclos' regional "knowledge is highly superficial?" [175]
One final example of Pérouse de Montclos downplaying ties to al-Qaida and not citing contradictory sources is the fact that his journal article is time-stamped as having been received by the journal in February 2016—one month after the U.S. released in January 2016 a letter from Abubakar Shekau that was found in Usama bin Laden's compound in which Shekau expressed generalized interest in al-Qaida to "Bin Laden's representative (wakil)." [176] However, Pérouse de Montclos does not mention that letter from Shekau at all in his article, including in his discussion of Boko Haram's links to al-Qaida, for which he only provides examples to not show links. Either he is not paying attention to these sources closely and did not know about the release of that document from Shekau— which means he does not deserve to be treated as a specialist on Boko Haram because anyone paying close attention would know about that document (especially by the time of his last revision of the article before it was published in August 2016)—or he is purposefully ignoring sources. The five academics wrote in their attempted critique without providing any evidence that I "distort chronology to imply that scholars neglected to mention evidence that only became available after their publications appeared", but as seen in Rebuttal #3 it is them who did that to me. [177] In this specific example, Pérouse de Montclos clearly had the opportunity to include this document from Shekau as evidence about Boko Haram's ties to al-Qaida in his journal article, but he did not.
This is not to say Pérouse de Montclos should not publish and his conclusions are not worthy of respect; it is only to say that considering some errors, gaps and flaws in his work, it may be unwise to drum out other analysts with differing perspectives from him and allow his academic clique to enforce the line on intellectual discourse in the field.
3. Groupthink
As discussed in the beginning of this article, I argue these academics seek to pressure others in the field to conform to their groupthink. This does not mean their voices should not be heard, but rather there is a risk in allowing a clique including these five academics to cancel out dissenting and minority views.
A case of groupthink can be seen beginning in August 2009 when the BBC interviewed Adam Higazi about Boko Haram not long after the July 2009 clashes that killed then leader Muhammed Yusuf and 800 followers. Higazi downplayed the possibility of attacks and said, "as in many places in the world, young Muslims might sympathise with Osama bin Laden's condemnation of the West but there is a long way from that to staging attacks." [178] Higazi did not expect Boko Haram would soon carry out attacks in Nigeria even while during the very month of his interview Shekau sent emissaries to AQIM to discuss funding and training so Boko Haram could carry out attacks in Nigeria. [179]
Six years after the BBC interview, in 2015 Higazi published the 48-page book chapter on Boko Haram (the same one in which he claimed without any sources that some Christians were blowing up their own churches in Jos, Gombe and Bauchi, which is discussed in Rebuttal #24). In the book chapter he wrote:
"People are understandably baffled as to how an initially ragtag group like Boko Haram, which five years earlier was crushed in less than a week, could now be armed to the teeth, capturing some 70 per cent of Borno and inflicting one defeat after another on the Nigerian armed forces. This does still require a convincing explanation, and it has inevitably fuelled conspiracy theories" (italics added for emphasis). [180]
By 2015, Higazi still had no explanation for why Boko Haram had become so military powerful since 2009. He could have, among other scholars' publications, considered my article for the CTC Sentinel in October 2014 titled "Boko Haram: Recruitment, Financing, and Arms Trafficking in the Lake Chad Region", in which I argued:
"when Boko Haram began carrying out sophisticated bombings, such as on churches on Christmas Day in 2010 and the Federal Police Headquarters and UN Building in 2011, and kidnapping foreigners in 2012, it relied on Nigerians who received funding or training from abroad with al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and who were part of Ansaru's shura (leadership council)." [181]
Higazi, however, mentioned al-Qaida only one time in the entire book chapter to say:
"Under Shekau's leadership the movement started producing al-Qaida style videos in which Shekau mimicked Osama bin Laden's disposition and dress, with a camouflage jacket and an AK47 rifle propped up against the wall." [182]
Despite other scholars arguing that there may be an operational relationship between AQIM and Boko Haram and that this could explain why Boko Haram had become militarily powerful from 2009 to 2015, Higazi rebuffed such evidence and instead cited only Boko Haram videos insofar as al-Qaida was concerned in his analysis (AQIM or al-Shabab were not mentioned once in his book chapter).
I argue that there are two reasons why Higazi had no explanation for Boko Haram's rising military power from 2009 to 2015: one is methodological and the other is groupthink. The methodological reason can be seen in Higazi's comment to another scholar's article on Boko Haram for African Arguments in 2014, where he criticized the scholar for "trying to make sense of Boko Haram's actions and strategy based on her own assumptions, not through the perspectives or accounts of people affected who have knowledge of these issues" (italics added for emphasis). [183]
In this comment, Higazi revealed why he cannot answer questions on Boko Haram's military improvement from 2009 to 2015: those "affected who have knowledge of these issues" are not the people he, or virtually anybody, can meet through his preferred methodology of fieldwork with "local informants"—villagers, professors, victims, chiefs, teachers, traders and the like. In "local informant" interviews Higazi is not going to meet the high level Boko Haram military commanders who have knowledge of the group's "actions and strategy" and who virtually no one has met except for perhaps Nigerian journalist Ahmed Salkida. By virtue of being from Borno State or Nigeria one does not inherently know Boko Haram "actions and strategy". Similarly, someone from Virginia in the U.S. does not inherently know the "actions and strategy" of the gang MS-13, nor does someone from Finland inherently know about the "actions and strategy" of the anti-immigrant vigilante group Soldiers of Odin that was founded there.
"Local informant" interviews can be useful in gauging perceptions but are not as useful in understanding the "actions or strategy" of highly clandestine violent non-state actors like Boko Haram. Higazi has also never cited Boko Haram commanders' leaked or retrieved letters or audio sermons (some of which are now available) in his work or even cited scholars who cite those letters or sermons. As a result, he has not been able to provide answers to key questions about Boko Haram "actions and strategy" and instead has remained "baffled" about important aspects of the group that the public wants to understand, such as its military improvement from 2009 to 2015.
This is not to say Higazi's "local informant"-rooted approach to research cannot be valuable: indeed, it has advantages for anthropological work on actors that are generally not clandestine in the Middle Belt. [184] But his methodology of interviewing "local informants" has serious shortcomings for the study of clandestine violent non-state actors like Boko Haram, especially when he does not counteract those shortcomings with examination of primary sources from the leadership of the group. In fact, if he combined his anthropological work with sources on the leadership of the group, and was more cautious about citing (recalling his unsourced claim that Christians were attacking their own churches in Jos, Gombe and Bauchi after "being paid by Boko Haram"), he could produce new and original work on the insurgency in Nigeria.
It is not as if Higazi does not recognize the importance of understanding the leadership and internal dynamics of Boko Haram: he wrote in the previously mentioned comment for African Arguments in 2014 that "there is a real problem of access and a lack of knowledge of the internal workings of the group [Boko Haram]." [185] He is right. He even reiterated this point in his book chapter in 2015 where he wrote:
"Although the major acts of violence by Boko Haram receive international news coverage and there is significant academic interest in the subject, the internal dynamics of the insurgency and of Boko Haram as a movement are not well understood" (italics added for emphasis). [186]
The importance of this we agree on, but when I wrote the Studies in Conflict Terrorism article in February 2018 and Perspectives on Terrorism article in December 2017 article precisely on my findings about the "internal dynamics of the insurgency" based on internal documents from the group and corroborative secondary sources, he participated in the attack piece against me. Even before he wrote his book chapter in 2015, I had written two articles for the CTC Sentinel on internal and factional dynamics of the insurgency called "Leadership Analysis of Boko Haram and Ansaru in Nigeria" and "Cooperation or Competition: Boko Haram and Ansaru After the Mali Intervention." [187] However, the only time Higazi cited me in his book chapter was not related to any of my work on Boko Haram's internal dynamics but instead to name-call me in an unprofessional and immature way in a footnote and say I am a "pundit." [188]
I am not saying Higazi should have cited me, but I am arguing he would not cite me because of the second reason why he could not explain Boko Haram's military improvement from 2009 to 2015— groupthink. To cite another scholar's view of the internal dynamics of the insurgency, which, in turn, shows that Boko Haram leaders care about ideology and have foreign contacts would disrupt "the quick and painless unanimity on the issues that [his academic clique] confronts." [189] This groupthink is evidenced in Higazi's book chapter, where he writes, "There are some excellent scholarly works on Boko Haram, but these are the exception in the existing literature." [190] Not surprisingly, the "excellent scholarly works" he references in the related footnote of the chapter include only Pérouse de Montclos; Kyari Muhammed; Higazi himself; and Higazi's own advisor, the late Abdul Raufu Mustapha. As I have mentioned, these academics have provided what Andrew Silke might describe as a "glorified literature review" based on "recycled data": they have introduced few new sources or original analysis to the discussion on Boko Haram. This is why Higazi's reliance on these academics led him to not be able to answer certain key questions, such as "why has Boko Haram become so military powerful from 2009 to 2015?" or "What are Boko Haram's internal dynamics?" [191]
This incestuous intra-group self-citing is not limited to Higazi. For example, in Thurston's book on Boko Haram he cites Pérouse de Montclos where he says "the involvement of Nigeria's neighbors in the 2015 anti-Boko Haram campaign.... 'effectively broke the mutual non-aggression pact that had prevailed until then [with Cameroon].'" [192] The article by Pérouse de Montclos that Thurston cites as evidence for this "mutual non-aggression pact" with Cameroon, however, does not cite any source for that claim. [193] Therefore, if someone now cites Thurston's book about Boko Haram's "mutual non-aggression pact" with Cameroon, they will have created the classic "reinforcing feedback loop" that Dolnik and Ranstorp have lamented, where one author cites Thurston who cites Pérouse de Montclos who cites nothing about what is a fairly important claim about a Boko Haram engaging in a "mutual non-aggression pact" with Cameroon. [194] This is not to say there was never such a pact, but until a credible source is produced the claim remains speculation on the part of Thurston and Pérouse de Montclos.
Thurston's groupthink was also seen in his May 2018 report for the United States Institute of Peace, where he listed "notable studies" about Boko Haram. Not surprisingly, those studies are from his academic clique: an article by Adam Higazi's former advisor Abdul Raufu Mustapha in 2014; a book chapter by Kyari Muhammed in 2014; the edited book by Pérouse de Montclos in which Kyari Muhammed's chapter appears; the book chapter by Adam Higazi in 2015; one other author in 2017; and Thurston's own book. [195] Thurston ignores anyone outside of his clique, including a swathe of work on Boko Haram from 2016 and 2017 from such researchers as Abdulbasit Kassim, Andrea Brigaglia, or Anneli Botha. Meanwhile, the "notable studies" from Higazi and Kyari Muhammed are the ones I have mentioned that made unsourced allegations that Christians were attacking churches "in the name of Boko Haram" or after being "paid by Boko Haram."
While members of this academic clique may be unaware they are engaging in groupthink, which is common for "victims" of it, and claim they have no agenda, the record suggests one should be wary. Whereas my articles mentioned above, such as "Boko Haram: Recruitment, Financing, and Arms Trafficking in the Lake Chad Region", respect the local, sub-regional, and international context of Boko Haram, it is telling that when the UK NGO, Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART), consulted with Higazi for a report they published on Nigeria in 2015, they found that:
"Some of our respondents hypothesised that Boko Haram has international connections and support from outside, as well as from within Nigeria. However, researcher Adam Higazi highlighted that the wealth and resources of Boko Haram can be explained without international support. Their looting of markets and homes, robbing of banks, stealing weapons from the Nigerian Military and funds generated through ransom payments can explain this growth." [196]
Higazi is analytically incorrect to deflect from Boko Haram's international support. Moreover, it is ironic that his academic clique accuses me of a "one-dimensional narrative" about Boko Haram when clearly they promote a "one-dimensional narrative", as indicated in Higazi's unbalanced response to HART. [197] One can compare Higazi's response about Boko Haram funding to my 2014 CTC Sentinel article on "Boko Haram: Recruitment, Financing, and Arms Trafficking in the Lake Chad Region", where I addressed the issue in a more balanced way and said:
"When Boko Haram was an above ground movement before 2009, it had wealthy members who served as intermediaries between financial sponsors, such as local government officials or wealthy Salafists abroad, and Muhammad Yusuf. Now officials have distanced themselves from Boko Haram, while mainstream Salafist and al-Qa'ida funding decreased as a result of Boko Haram's massacres, the break-up of Ansaru's shura in Kaduna in 2012, and the French-led military intervention in northern Mali in 2013, which disrupted the AQIM supply line to Boko Haram. However, Boko Haram has made inroads with new financiers, who are from Borno and bordering areas of Cameroon's Extreme North Region and are often ethnic Kanuris like Yusuf, Shekau and most Boko Haram members. These financiers provide Boko Haram with weapons and a route to negotiation with the Cameroonian government in kidnapping-for-ransom operations." [198]
The most unfortunate aspect of this academic clique's groupthink is that Higazi even recognizes in his book chapter that failing to answer key questions specifically about Boko Haram's military improvement from 2009 to 2015 has "fueled conspiracy theories" about how Boko Haram became so powerful (presumably in addition to the conspiracy theories about Christians attacking churches "in the name of Boko Haram" or after "being paid by Boko Haram", which Kyari Muhammed and Higazi advanced). [199] I am sure Higazi would agree such a result is undesirable, and I would argue such a result is not only undesirable but also preventable, including by his group adjusting their methodologies, stepping away from groupthink and considering alternate viewpoints.
Conclusion
By this point it should be clear these academics commit the same errors about which they wrongly accuse me. Despite the apparent impasse we face, I must note that only one of the academics who made allegations against me in the hit piece, Pérouse de Montclos, has shown a willingness to have discussions with me on sources, methods and conclusions. While such a meeting occurred due primarily to happenstance, perhaps some of his previous – and compelling – scholarship precisely on humanitarian and conflict resolution strategies translated into the personal arena at that time. [200]
Such discussions may offer a path forward in the future.
Let me finally emphasize a message not only for this current dispute but for terrorism studies and the academic enterprise more generally: Where you have consensus and stifle dissenting and minority viewpoints, let alone ones with a proven track record, you risk falling into groupthink and creating a system that cannot be self-correcting when it errs.
Another lesson for academia that one can take from this dispute comes from one of my Nigerian colleagues, who has written: Any academic not prepared to ask new questions, not prepared to revisit and question what has been documented as canons of Scholarship, or who wants to play it safe in order not to step on wrong toes, then such academic does not need be in the field of knowledge production.
Looking into the future, this debate is actually probably better for our understanding of Boko Haram. From now on, they will scrutinize my analysis, sources and methods more and I will surely shine a spotlight on their coming works. That competition is healthy for the field. The competition, however, will not exist if they seek to cancel out the dissenting views of others.
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Notes
[1] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings." Perspectives on Terrorism, Volume 11, Number 6, pp. 174-190, December 2018; URL: http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/ index.php/pot/article/view/666/1326 .
[2] Adam Higazi, Brandon Kendhammer, Kyari Mohammed, Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, and Alex Thurston, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida," Perspectives on Terrorism, Volume 12, Number 2, April 2018; URL: http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/703/html .
[3] A bon mot on James Surowiecki's "The Wisdom of Crowds", Anchor, August 16, 2005 and "In Praise of Folly" by Desiderius Erasmus (1509).
[4] Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto)," Random House, January 28, 2014.
[5] This quote comes from a scene called "I Don't Like Bullies" in the 2016 U.S. comedy action film, "Central Intelligence"; URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkqm9sqEiNE .
[6] Irving Janis, "Groupthink," In E. Griffin (Ed.) A First Look at Communication Theory (pp. 235 - 246). New York: McGrawHill. (1991).
[7] According to Janis, "groupthink stands for an excessive form of concurrence-seeking among members of high prestige, tightly knit policy-making groups" (or academics in the case of this article). He argues that it is "excessive to the extent that the group members have come to value the group (and their being part of it) higher than anything else. This causes them to strive for a quick and painless unanimity on the issues that the group has to confront. To preserve the clubby atmosphere, group members suppress personal doubts, silence dissenters, and follow the group leader's suggestions. They have a strong belief in the inherent morality of the group, combined with a decidedly evil picture of the group's opponents. The results are devastating: a distorted view of reality, excessive optimism producing hasty and reckless policies, and a neglect of ethical issues. The combination of these deficiencies makes these groups particularly vulnerable to initiate or sustain projects that turn out to be policy fiascoes (bold added for emphasis)." See Paul Hart, "Irving L. Janis' Victims of Groupthink," Political Psychology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Jun., 1991), pp. 247-278.
[8] Irving Janis, "Groupthink."
[9] Some of the five authors have claimed Boko Haram was "homegrown" and had "local grievances" when it was founded in 2002-2003 and now say it was a "heterogeneous" group; I say it was founded by jihadists who were in the Nigerian diaspora and had the intent to engage in a jihadi campaign in Nigeria after 9/11. Some of the five authors used to say AQIM support to Boko Haram was "speculative" or "not serious" and now say Boko Haram received "marginal" support from AQIM before it began to wage a jihad in 2009-2010; I have said since late 2012 that AQIM and al-Shabab provided significant support to Boko Haram from 2009 to 2010, and the subsequent primary source evidence has further validated this claim. Some of the five authors suggested that Boko Haram carried out Nigeria's first ever suicide campaign in 2011-2012 with homegrown capabilities and now say AQIM "may" have contributed to Boko Haram's first two suicide bombings; I say that AQIM and al-Shabab support was significant in this suicide bombing campaign. See, for example, Kyari Mohammed, "The message and methods of Boko Haram," in: Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos (Ed.) Islamism, Politics, Security and the State in Nigeria,(Ibadan: French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA)–Leiden: African Studies Centre, 2014. Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "Nigeria's Interminable Insurgency: Addressing the Boko Haram Crisis." Alex Thurston, "The disease is unbelief ': Boko Haram's religious and political worldview," The Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World Analysis Paper, No. 22, January 2016; URL: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/ Brookings-Analysis-Paper_Alex-Thurston_Final_Web.pdf . Alexander Thurston, "Boko Haram and ISIS: Be Careful with Evidence," Sahelblog, 27 May 2015; URL: https://sahelblog. wordpress.com/2015/05/27/boko-haram-and-isis-be-careful-with-evidence . Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "A Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria: The Case of Boko Haram," Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 878 – 895, 2016. Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings."
[10] Irving Janis uses the term "victims" to describe people engaged in groupthink. The five authors claim that "we have major disagreements with one another over how to interpret evidence related to Boko Haram...." However, as this article shows, if that is true, it is not evidenced in their mutual self-praise of each other. It would be useful if they did address those disagreements before writing ad hominem attacks against other scholars with whom they disagree.
[11] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida."
[12] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings." Perspectives on Terrorism, Volume 11, Number 6, pp. 174-190, December 2018; URL: http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/ index.php/pot/article/view/666/1326 .
[13] Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Conquest for the Caliphate: How Al Qaida Helped Islamic State Acquire Territory," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 35:5, March 13, 2018; URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2018.1442141 .
[14] Irving Janis, "Groupthink."
[15] See, for example, Robert S. Broadhead and Ray C. Rist, "Gatekeepers and the Social Control of Social Research, Social Problems, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Feb., 1976), pp. 325-336; URL: https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Broadhead&Rist-Gatekeepers.pdf . Anonnymous, "We need a bigger conversation about bullying in academia," The Guardian, January 26, 2018; URL: https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2018/jan/26/we-need-a-bigger-conversation-about-bullying-in-academia . Kelly J. Baker, "Cruelty and Kindness in Academia," Chronicle Vitae, October 11, 2016; URL: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1572-cruelty-and-kindness-in-academia . Brian Martin & Majken Jul Sørensen, "Confronting academic snobbery," Australian Universities' Review, Volume 56, Number 2, 2014, pp. 64-68; URL: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1047084.pdf . David D. Perlmutter, "Spotting Your Enemies," The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 7, 2010; URL: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Spotting-Your-Faculty-Enemies/125289?sid=wb&utm_medium=en&utm_source=wb .
[16] "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" - Matthew 7:3-5
[17] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings." Perspectives on Terrorism, Volume 11, Number 6, pp. 174-190, December 2018; URL: http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/ index.php/pot/article/view/666/1326 .
[18] Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "A Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria: The Case of Boko Haram, Small Wars & Insurgencies," 27:5,pp. 878-895, 2016. Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "Introduction," in: Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, op. cit. (2014). Alex Thurston, "The disease is unbelief ': Boko Haram's religious and political worldview." Alexander Thurston, "Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement," Princeton University Press (January 2018).
[19] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida."
[20] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings."
[21] Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram: Recruitment, Financing, and Arms Trafficking in the Lake Chad Region," Volume 7, Issue 10, October 2014; URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/boko-haram-recruitment-financing-and-arms-trafficking-in-the-lake-chad-region/ .
[22] Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Evolving Tactics and Alliances in Nigeria," Volume 6, Issue 6, June 2013; URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/boko-harams-evolving-tactics-and-alliances-in-nigeria/ .
[23] Zacharias Pieri and Jacob Zenn. 2017. "The Boko Haram Paradox: Ethnicity, Religion, and Historical Memory in Pursuit of a Caliphate", in Hentz, James and Hussein Solomon (eds.), Understanding Boko Haram: Terrorism and Insurgency in Africa. New York and London. Routledge.
[24] Elizabeth Pearson and Jacob Zenn, "Women, Gender and the evolving tactics of Boko Haram," Contemporary Voices: St Andrews Journal of Terrorism Research, 5(1), 2014; URL: https://cvir.st-andrews.ac.uk/articles/10.15664/jtr.828/ . Elizabeth Pearson and Jacob Zenn, "How Nigerian police also detained women and children as weapon of war," The Guardian, May 6, 2014; URL: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/06/how-nigerian-police-also-detained-women-and-children-as-weapon-of-war . Elizabeth Pearson and Jacob Zenn, #Bringbackourgirls? Two Years After The Chibok Girls Were Taken, What Do We Know?," War on the Rocks, April 14, 2016; URL: https://warontherocks.com/2016/04/bringbackourgirls-two-years-after-the-chibok-girls-were-taken-what-do-we-know/ .
[25] Jacob Zenn, "The Terrorist Calculus in Kidnapping Girls in Nigeria: Cases from Chibok and Dapchi," Volume 11, Issue 3, CTC Sentinel, March 2018; URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/the-terrorist-calculus-in-kidnapping-girls-in-nigeria-cases-from-chibok-and-dapchi/ .
[26] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida."
[27] For a recent article on the IMN leader, see Evelyn Okakwu, "Detained Nigeria Shiite leader El-Zakzaky charged with murder," Vanguard, April 26, 2018; URL: https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/266353-detained-nigeria-shiite-leader-el-zakzaky-charged-with-murder.html .
[28] "Nigeria: End Repression of Shia Group," Human Rights Watch, December 14, 2016; URL: https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/12/14/nigeria-end-repression-shia-group .
[29] "Alex Thurston, "Mainstream Salafis between Boko Haram and the State," Islamic Africa, (2015) 109-134.
[30] Referring to "medieval times" Voll only writes about "corruption" insofar as "jihad against corrupt self-identified Muslims took priority over jihad against non-believers. Jihad was a movement of purification more than a movement of conversion." John O. Voll, "Boko Haram: Religion and Violence in the 21st Century," Religions, 2015, 6(4), 1182-1202; URL: http://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/6/4/1182/htm .
[31] Alex Thurston, "Five Myths About Boko Haram," Sahelblog, January 14, 2018; URL: https://www.lawfareblog.com/five-myths-about-boko-haram .
[32] Alexander Smith, "What is Boko Haram, the militant group terrorizing Nigeria?," June 19, 2018; URL: https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/smart-facts/what-boko-haram-militant-group-terrorizing-nigeria-n884146 .
[33] Abdulbasit Kassim and Michael Nwankpa, "The Boko Haram Reader: From Nigerian Preachers to the Islamic State," London: Hurst (2018).
[34] Ejovi Austine, Mgbonyebi Voke Charles and Akpokighe Okiemute Raymond, "Corruption in Nigeria: A Historical Perspective," Research on Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol.3, No.16, 2013; URL: http://www.iiste.org/Journals/index.php/RHSS/article/viewFile/8365/8494 .
[35] Albert Isaac Olawale, "Violence in metropolitan Kano: A Historical Perspective." In: Urban Violence in Africa: Pilot Studies (South Africa, Côte-d'Ivoire, Nigeria) [online]. Ibadan: Institut français de recherche en Afrique, 1994; URL: https://books.openedition.org/ifra/788?lang=en .
[36] Jacob Zenn, "From One Campaign to the Next: Buhari and the Battle against Boko Haram," African Arguments, April 7, 2015; URL: http://africanarguments.org/2015/04/07/from-one-campaign-to-the-next-buhari-and-the-battle-against-boko-haram-by-jacob-zenn/ .
[37] It is relevant to note that 168 countries were ranked in 2014-2016 whereas 180 countries were ranked in 2017, so the worsening of Nigeria's corruption ranking may appear to be slightly more than it actually was. "Corruption getting worse in Nigeria – Transparency International," Vanguard, February 21, 2018; URL: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/02/corruption-getting-worse-nigeria-transparency-international/ . See Corruption Perceptions Index at: https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2017 .
[38] Dianne Rehm Show, "Update On The Nigerian Schoolgirl Abduction," NPR, May 8, 2014; URL: https://dianerehm.org/shows/2014-05-08/update-nigerian-schoolgirl-abduction .
[39] Jacob Zenn, "Nigerian Al-Qaedaism," Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, May 11, 2014; URL: https://www.hudson.org/research/10172-nigerian- al-Qaedaism- .
[40] Ismail Omipidan, "Boko Haram: How Yusuf imported arms into the country," The Sun, October 10, 2009; URL: http://www.nigerianbestforum.com/index.php?topic=49841.0;wap .
[41] A simple google search of Hadhihi 'Aqidatuna wa-Manhaj Da'watina will show that although it was written in 2009 scholars did not have access to it and cite until 2015.
[42] Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "Boko Haram: A Jihadist Enigma in Nigeria," in Understanding Boko Haram: Terrorism and Insurgency in Africa, ed. by Hussein Solomon and James Hentz, in "Understanding Boko Haram," Routledge, 2017.
[43] Even in the unlikely event that some Boko Haram members used amulets, as Pérouse de Montclos claimed without providing any sources, it still would not mean Boko Haram members as such "reached a compromise with African witchcraft" any more than a Neo-Nazi hugging a black person or marrying a Jew means that Neo-Nazis as such "reached a compromise" with black people or Jews. For the record, in 18 hours of viewing internal footage from captured videos from Boko Haram camp for a project with Voice of America (VOA) from 2014 to 2016, I saw no amulets or African witchcraft practiced. Daniel Sugarman, "Neo-Nazi blogger revealed to be married to Jewish woman," Thejc.com, January 18, 2017; URL: https://www.thejc.com/news/world/neo-nazi-blogger-revealed-to-be-married-to-jewish-woman-1.430845 . "Neo-Nazi, black man share hug at white nationalist rally, Newshub.com, October 21, 2017; URL: http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2017/10/neo-nazi-black-man-share-hug-at-white-nationalist-rally.html . Clips from the internal video footage can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt7-nu3fyPg . Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "Boko Haram: A Jihadist Enigma in Nigeria."
[44] Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "Boko Haram: A Jihadist Enigma in Nigeria."
[45] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings."
[46] In the Chatham House report, Pérouse de Montclos wrote that "There has been speculation about potential operational links between Boko Haram and Al-Qaida" and cited a report of mine for The Jamestown Foundation from November 2012 in the related footnote, implying I was the one doing the "speculating". I wonder if he still considers that "speculation". Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "Nigeria's Interminable Insurgency: Addressing the Boko Haram Crisis," London: Chatham House, Research Paper : September 2014; URL: http://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/nigerias-interminableinsurgency- addressing-boko-haram-crisis .
[47] I had written a very similar, but more detailed, account of the kidnapping of the German engineer in Kano and the demand to exchange the German engineer for Filiz Gelowicz in a 2012 article for CTC Sentinel. But, in contrast to Pérouse de Montclos' 2014 Chatham House report, I included citations to the primary sources about the kidnapping of the German in footnotes of that article, which allows a reader to corroborate my claims by reading original sources. See Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Dangerous Expansion into Northwest Nigeria," Volume 5, Issue 10, October 2012; URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/boko-harams-dangerous-expansion-into-northwest-nigeria/ .
[48] Evidence that Ansaru kidnapped and killed the German engineer and other foreign engineers who were kidnapped and killed in Kebbi and Sokoto in March 2012 and Bauchi and Sambisa Forest, Borno State in 2013 includes: "On the Killing of the German Prisoner in Nigeria", al-Andalus Media, 15 June 2012.; URL: http://jihadology.net/2012/06/12/al-andalus-media-presentsa- new-statement-from-al-Qaidah-in-the-islamic-maghrib-on-the-killing-of-the-german-prisoner-in-nigeria/ . "Al-Andalus Media presents a new statement and video message from al-Qā'ida in the Islamic Maghrib: "To the German Government: If They Release Umm Sayf Allah al-Anṣārī Then We Will Release To You Our Prisoner", Al-Andalus Media, 23 March 2012.; URL: http://jihadology. net/2012/03/23/al-andalus-media-presents-a-new-statement-and-video-message-from-al-Qaidah-in-the-islamic-maghrib-to-thegerman- government-if-they-release-umm-sayf-allah-al-an%E1%B9%A3ari-then-we-will-re/ . "Boko Haram: Splinter Group, Ansaru Emerges," Vanguard, February 1, 2012; URL: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/02/boko-haram-splinter-group-ansaru-emerges/ . Emmanuel Ogala, "Boko Haram Gets N40 Million Donation From Algeria," Premium Times, May 13, 2012; URL: https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/5079-boko_haram_gets_n40million_donation_from_algeria.html . "New statement from Jama'at Ansạr al-Muslimın Fi Bilad al-Sudan's Abu Usama al-Ansạrı, 'Killing the Christian Prisoners as a Result of the Joint Nigerian-British Military Operation,'" March 9, 2013; URL: https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2013/ 03/jamc481_at-ane1b9a3c481r-al-muslimc4abn-fi-bilc481d-al-sc5abdc481n-e2809ckillingthe- christian-prisoners-as-a-result-of-the-joint-nigerian-british-military-operation22-en.pdf . "Nigeria Detains 5 with 'Al Qaida-links' over German Kidnap," Agence France-Presse, 27 March 2012; Lawal Danuma, "Kidnapped German Killed in JTF Raid," Daily Trust, 31 May 2012
[49] Case studies of these kidnappings from 2013, which now have additional information to support them, are included Jacob Zenn, "Cooperation or Competition: Boko Haram and Ansaru After the Mali Intervention," CTC Sentinel 6:3 (March 2013); URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/cooperation-or-competition-boko-haram-and-ansaru-after-the-mali-intervention/ . Sources for each case are included in the footnotes of the article.
[50] Alex Thurston, "A Kidnapping in Northern Nigeria [Updated]," Sahelblog, May 16, 2011; URL: https://sahelblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/a-kidnapping-in-northern-nigeria/ . by https://sahelblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/a-kidnapping-in-northern-nigeria/ .
[51] See Alex Thurston, "Nigeria: Video Released on Kebbi Victims Links Kidnapping to Al Qaida [Updated]," Sahelblog, August 3, 2011; URL: https://sahelblog.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/nigeria-video-released-on-kebbi-victims-links-kidnapping-to-al-Qaida/ .
[52] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida." The "prediction" in question is in Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Buyer's Remorse," Foreign Policy, 20 June 2016; URL: http://foreignpolicy. com/2016/06/20/boko-harams-buyers-remorse/. For an updated analysis, see Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Fluctuating Affiliations: Future Prospects for Realignment with al-Qa'ida," ed. by Jacob Zenn, in "Boko Haram Beyond the Headlines: Analyses of Africa's Enduring Insurgency," West Point CTC, New York, May 2018; URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/app/uploads/2018/05/Boko-Haram-Beyond-the-Headlines.pdf .
[53] Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "A Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria: The Case of Boko Haram."
[54] Alex Thurston, "Five Myths About Boko Haram," Sahelblog, January 14, 2018; URL: https://www.lawfareblog.com/five-myths-about-boko-haram .
[55] Shaykh Abu Al-Hasan Rashid, "Documents of Advice And Sharia Instruction To The Fighters In Nigeria"; URL: https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/shaykh-abucc84-al-hcca3asan-rashicc84d-22sharicc84ah-advice-and-guidance-for-the-mujacc84hidicc84n-of-nigeria22.pdf .
[56] See section "Concerns Over AQIM" in Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Dangerous Expansion into Northwest Nigeria," CTC Sentinel, Volume 5, Issue 10, October 2012; URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/boko-harams-dangerous-expansion-into-northwest-nigeria/ . Alex Thurston, "Five Myths About Boko Haram."
[57] For more on the importance of observing "sudden events" for analysis, see Randolph H. Pherson, Alan R. Schwartz, Elizabeth Manak, "Anticipating Rare Events: The Role of ACH and Other Structured Analytic Techniques," Pherson Associates, 2008; URL: http://www.pherson.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/05.-Anticipating-Rare- Events-The-Role-of-ACH-and-Other-SATs_FINAL.pdf .
[58] Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Conquest for the Caliphate: How Al Qaida Helped Islamic State Acquire Territory."
[59] Ibid.
[60] Pérouse de Montclos also said in this report that "controlling territory" is a "pre-prerequisite for al-Qaida support", which is not correct. Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "Nigeria's Interminable Insurgency: Addressing the Boko Haram Crisis."
[61] "An Open Letter to Abubakar Shekau," 4 August 2016; URL: https://soundcloud.com/ saharareporters/2016-08-04-audio- 00000003-1 . Shaykh Abu Al-Hasan Rashid, "Documents of Advice And Sharia Instruction To The Fighters In Nigeria."
[62] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida."
[63] Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Conquest for the Caliphate: How Al Qaida Helped Islamic State Acquire Territory."
[64] Alexander Thurston, "Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement." Pg. 7.
[65] Ibid.
[66] Ibid.
[67] Jacob Zenn, "Nigerian Al-Qaedaism," Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, May 11, 2014; URL: https://www.hudson.org/research/10172-nigerian- al-Qaedaism- .
[68] Ibid.
[69] See, for example, "Misrepresenting and Misquoting: When you cite a source correctly but misrepresent what that source claimed. You may have not understood the original source and have inadvertently misrepresented the author's ideas. This is poor scholarship. Alternatively, you may have deliberately taken the words or ideas of an author out of context to support your argument. This is extremely poor scholarship and could constitute academic misconduct." University of Melbourne "Academic Integrity: Good scholarship and avoiding plagiarism;" URL: https://academicintegrity.unimelb.edu.au/forms-of-plagiarism .
[70] Alexander Thurston, "Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement." Pg. 7.
[71] Jacob Zenn, "The Continuing Threat of Boko Haram", Testimony before the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations and Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, November 13, 2013; URL: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA16/20131113/101479/HHRG-113-FA16-Wstate-ZennJ-20131113.pdf .
[72] See the introduction of Alexander Thurston, "Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement."
[73] One month after Thurston's article defending the Benghazi Defense Brigades was published the State Department released its Country Reports on Terrorism 2016, which said, "In the second half of 2016, AQIM increased its personnel and weapons support to the Benghazi Revolutionary Shura Council and the Benghazi Defense Brigades." Alex Thurston, "Who Counts as al-Qaida: Lessons from Libya," Lawfare, May 7, 2017; URL: https://lawfareblog.com/who-counts-al-Qaida-lessons-libya . Alex Thurston, "Mali: Iyad Ag Ghali's Loose Relationship with Salafism," Sahelblog, April 5, 2017l URL: https://sahelblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/05/mali-iyad-ag-ghalis-loose-relationship-with-salafism/ . State Department Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism released its Country Reports on Terrorism, "The Middle East And North Africa," https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2016/272232.htm . Andrew McGregor, "Libya's Military Wild Card: The Benghazi Defense Brigades and the Massacre at Brak al-Shatti," Terrorism Monitor, July 2, 2017; URL: https://jamestown.org/program/libyas-military-wild-card-benghazi-defense-brigades-massacre-brak-al-shatti/ .
[74] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings."
[75] Ibid.
[76] Azzam's "meeting" in September 1981 that Hegghammer references was with an Egyptian who convinced him to go to Afghanistan after which Azzam began the process of recruitment of thousands of Arabs to the Afghan jihad. Hegghammer, Thomas. "The Origins of Global Jihad: Explaining the Arab Mobilization to 1980s Afghanistan." Policy Brief, January 22, 2009.
[77] One such document, for example, is Abdallah Abu Zayd 'Abd-al-Hamid to 'our Shaykh and Emir, Abu Mus'ab 'Abd-al-Wadud' Subject: A letter from the Emir of the Nigeria group", Bin Laden's Bookshelf: Office of the Director of National Intelligence (released in January 2017 but dated to August 2009); URL: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ubl2017/english/Letter%20from%20Abdallah%20Abu%20Zayd%20Abdal- Hamid%20to%20Abu%20Mus%20ab%20Abd-al-Wadud.pdf .
[78] Shaykh Abu Al-Hasan Rashid, "Documents of Advice And Sharia Instruction To The Fighters In Nigeria."
[79] Emmanuel Ogala, "Boko Haram Gets N40 Million Donation From Algeria," Premium Times, May 13, 2012; URL: https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/5079-boko_haram_gets_n40million_donation_from_algeria.html .
[80] Lamine Chichi, "Algeria says Nigeria's Boko Haram tied to al Qaida," Reuters, November 13, 2011; URL: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nigeria-sect-algeria-idUSTRE7AC0SV20111113 . Laurent Prieur, "Boko Haram got al Qaida bomb training, Niger says," Reuters, January 25, 2012; URL: https://www.reuters.com/article/ozatp-sahara-bokoharam-Qaida-20120125-idAFJOE80O00K20120125 . "Letter dated January 17, 2012 from the Secretary-General addressed to the President of the Security Council," United Nations Security Council, January 18, 2012; URL: http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/Libya%20S%202012%2042.pdf .
[81] Letter dated 12 July 2013 from the Chair of the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 751 (1992) and 1907 (2009) concerning Somalia and Eritrea addressed to the President of the Security Council. 25 July 2013; URL: http://www. securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/s_2013_440.pdf . "Police Headquarters Bombing: IG Had Meeting With Bomber," Point Blank News, 17 June 2011.
[82] For one example, see "Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb: Condolence, Support and Comfort for our Brothers and People in Nigeria" and it was issued on 20 August 2009. North Africa Qaida Offers to Help Nigerian Muslims," Reuters, 1 February 2010; URL: https://www.reuters.com/article/ozatp-nigeria-Qaida-muslims-20100201-idAFJOE6100EE20100201 .
[83] Ousmane Kane, "Islamic Inroads in Sub-Saharan Africa," Harvard International Review, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer 2007), pp. 64 - 67.
[84] For a predictive analysis on the potential for jihadism in Senegal, for example, see Abdulbasit Kassim and Jacob Zenn, "Justifying War: The Salafi-Jihadi Appropriation of Sufi Jihad in the Sahel-Sahara," Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, March 26, 2018; URL: https://www.hudson.org/research/9788-current-trends-in-islamist-ideology-volume-14 . See also Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Senegalese Foreign Fighters: Cases, Trends and Implications", Terrorism Monitor, March 4, 2018; URL: https://jamestown.org/program/boko-harams-senegalese-foreign-fighters-cases-trends-and-implications/ .
[85] For a discussion of the five academics' view of "alarmism", see Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings."
[86 Stephen Schwartz, "Islamic Extremism on the Rise in Nigeria," Terrorism Monitor, October 21, 2005; URL: https://jamestown.org/analyst/stephen-schwartz/ .
[87] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida."
[88] @Dr_DMilton, April 11, 2018, URL: https://twitter.com/Dr_DMilton/status/984094294981185536 . For discussion of the ethics of citing a scholar's tweets, see Matthew L Williams, Pete Burnap, Luke Sloan, "Towards an Ethical Framework for Publishing Twitter Data in Social Research: Taking into Account Users' Views, Online Context and Algorithmic Estimation," Sociology, May 26, 2017 (Volume: 51 issue: 6); URL: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0038038517708140 . This author holds the view that so long as the tweet will reflect positively on the publisher of the content, it is admissible to be cited in public fora.
[89] Adam Nossiter, "New Threat in Nigeria as Militants Split Off," New York Times, April 26, 2013; URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/world/africa/in-nigeria-ansaru-militantgroup- poses-new-threat.html .
[90] For a discussion of Kilcullen's concept of the "accidental guerilla", see George Packer, "The Accidental Guerilla," The New Yorker, May 12, 2009; URL: "https://www.newyorker.com/news/george-packer/the-accidental-guerrilla .
[91] Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "A Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria: The Case of Boko Haram."
[92] James Khalil and Marco Nilsson have written on methodologies for interviewing terrorists; the late Lee Ann Fujii has similarly written on methodologies for interviewing genocaidaires in Rwanda. Their works are recommendable.
[93] Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "A Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria: The Case of Boko Haram."
[94] Adaobi Nwaubani, "In battle of beliefs, Nigeria targets Boko Haram's top brass," Reuters, August 2, 2017; URL: https://af.reuters.com/article/nigeriaNews/idAFL5N1KH5AP?feedType=RSS&feedName=nigeriaNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FAfricaNigeriaNews+%28News+%2F+Africa+%2F+Nigeria+News%29 .
[95] Alex Thurston, "The disease is unbelief ': Boko Haram's religious and political worldview."
[96] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings."
[97] Ibid.
[98] Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Conquest for the Caliphate: How Al Qaida Helped Islamic State Acquire Territory."
[99] Ibid.
[100] See, for example, #28 and #29 of https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09STATE67105_a.html .
[101] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida." Alexander Thurston, "Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement."
[102] See Pg. 13-14 of Abdulbasit Kassim, "Boko Haram's Internal Civil War: Stealth Takfir and Jihad as Recipes for Schism." ed. by Jacob Zenn, in "Boko Haram Beyond the Headlines: Analyses of Africa's Enduring Insurgency," West Point CTC, New York, May 2018; URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/app/uploads/2018/05/Boko-Haram-Beyond-the-Headlines.pdf .
[103] See, for example, David P. Carter, "Provocation and the Strategy of Terrorist and Guerrilla Attacks", International Organization, Winter 2016, pp. 133–173.
[104] From the five academics' article it is unclear if they consider Boko Haram's Kanamma camp at the time of the group's founding in 2002-2003 to be a jihadist/al-Qaida training camp at all. They say the members "were a heterogeneous group who engaged in activities as diverse as fishing, providing wage labor on nearby farms, and meeting with local authorities" and that the "nucleus" were "radical students from the University of Maiduguri who had dropped out of school...".
[105] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida."
[106] See discussion of Adam Kambar and Babagana Ismail Kwaljima in Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Conquest for the Caliphate: How Al Qaida Helped Islamic State Acquire Territory" and Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings." The relevant sources are also included in those articles.
[107] Abu Usamatul Ansary, "A Message from Nigeria," Al Risalah 4 (January 2017); URL: https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/al-risacc84lah-magazine-4.pdf .
[108] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings." The sources are included in the article.
[109] Kyari Mohammed, "The message and methods of Boko Haram."
[110] Abu Usamatul Ansary, "A Message from Nigeria."
[111] See Andrea Brigaglia, "The Volatility of Salafi Political Theology, the War on Terror and the Genesis of Boko Haram", Diritto e Questioni Pubbliche, pp. 174-201, 2015; URL: https://www.academia.edu/24045774/The_Volatility_of_Salafi_Political_Theology_the_War_on_Terror_and_the_Genesis_of_Boko_Haram .
Andrea Brigaglia, "Ja'far Mahmoud Adam, Mohammed Yusuf and Al-Muntada Islamic Trust: Reflections on the Genesis of the Boko Haram phenomenon in Nigeria," Annual Review of Islam in Africa, Issue No.11, 2012; URL: http://www.cci.uct.ac.za/usr/cci/publications/aria/download_issues/2012/Andrea%20Brigaglia.pdf . Andrea Brigaglia, "A Contribution to the History of the Wahhabi Daʿwa in West Africa: The Career and the Murder of Shaykh Jaʿfar Mahmoud Adam (Daura, ca. 1961/1962–Kano 2007)," Islamic Africa, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2012; URL: https://www.academia.edu/9668784/A_Contribution_to_the_History_of_the_Wahhabi_Dwa_in_West_Africa_The_Career_and_the_Murder_of_Shaykh_Jafar_Mahmoud_Adam .
[112] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings."
[113] Ibid.
[114] Alexander Thurston, "Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement."
[115] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings."
[116] Ibid. This specific attack was described in the media as such: "At least 30 people were killed at the St. Theresa Catholic church when suicide bombers detonated a large bomb on Christmas day 2011. Islamist militant group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attacks." "Christmas Day Bombing of St. Theresa Catholic Church In Madalla, Niger State," Sahara Reporters, December 25, 2011; URL: http://saharareporters.com/2011/12/25/video-christmas-day-bombing-st-theresa-catholic-church-madalla-niger-state .
[117] "Police Headquarters Bombing: IG Had Meeting With Bomber," The NigerianVoice, June 17, 2011; URL: https://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/54135/police-headquarters-bombing-ig-had-meeting-with-bomber.html .
[118] Kyari Mohammed, "The message and methods of Boko Haram," in: Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos (Ed.) Islamism, Politics, Security and the State in Nigeria,(Ibadan: French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA)–Leiden: African Studies Centre, 2014.
[119] "Police arrest prostitute over alleged attempt to burn down church," Vanguard, August 30, 2011; URL: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/08/police-arrest-prostitute-over-alleged-attempt-to-burn-down-church/ .
[120] See, for example, "List Of Suspected Christian Boko Haram Bombers," Nairaland, June 19, 2012; URL: http://www.nairaland.com/968413/list-suspected-christian-boko-haram .
[121] Adam Higazi, "Mobilisation into and against Boko Haram in North-East Nigeria," in M. Cahen, M.E. Pommerolle, K. Tall (Eds.), Collective Mobilisations in Africa: Contestation, Resistance, Revolt. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
[122] Ibid. It should also be noted there are no Christian members of Boko Haram. If, however, Boko Haram had even one recognized Christian member, it would force scholars working on the group to have to reconsider their classification of the group as either jihadi, jihadi-salafi or possibly even Islamist: simply put, according to Boko Haram, only a Muslim – and probably only a Muslim man – can be a "mujahid". As anyone who studies Boko Haram or other jihadi groups would know there are only people who are Muslim (or claim to be Muslim) in such groups although, in theory, they may receive supplies from Christians (or even Sufis or other groups they consider to be heretical). Similarly, a Neo-Nazi group in the United States may purchase items from an Asian-American, African-American or Jewish-American store owner but that does not mean that those "suppliers" can be or are members of the Neo-Nazi group or that they support such groups beyond a financial incentive or legal obligation to not deny them services. In addition, if Higazi's suggestion in his book chapter that "Igbos" were in a Boko Haram camp is true, it does not mean that although over 90% of Igbos are Christians that the Igbos in the camp were Christians, as they could have been recent converts or Muslim-born Igbos. This matter is consequential if one believes engaging on issues of religious ideology is important to countering Boko Haram and similar jihadi-salafi groups. In two separate conferences I attended on countering violent extremism in Cairo and Kenya in 2016, religious leaders and some academics said "Boko Haram has Christian members", which implied there was no need to scrutinize the group's reference points because it was not a "Muslim group" in the first place.
[123] Kyari Mohammed, "The message and methods of Boko Haram."
[124] Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Conquest for the Caliphate: How Al Qaida Helped Islamic State Acquire Territory."
[125] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings."
[126] Ibid.
[127] Ibid.
[128] Jacob Zenn, "Nigerians in Gao: was Boko Haram really active in Northern Mali?," African Arguments, January 20, 2014; URL: http://africanarguments.org/2014/01/20/nigerians-in-gao-was-boko-haram-active-in-northern-mali-by-jacob-zenn/ .
[129] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings."
[130] Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Conquest for the Caliphate: How Al Qaida Helped Islamic State Acquire Territory."
[131] May Welsh, "Mali: The 'gentle' face of al-Qaida," al-Jazeera, December 30, 2012; URL: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/2012review/2012/12/20121228102157169557.html .
[132] Shaykh Abu Al-Hasan Rashid, "Documents of Advice And Sharia Instruction To The Fighters In Nigeria."
[133] Virginia Comolli and Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram is no African al-Qaida," Tracking Terrorism, August 17, 2012, URL: https://www.iiss.org/en/iiss%20voices/blogsections/2012-6d11/august-2012-c294/boko-haram-african-al-Qaida-b161
[134] See, for example, Jacob Zennn, "Boko Haram's Dangerous Expansion into Northwest Nigeria," Volume 5, Issue 10, October 2012; URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/boko-harams-dangerous-expansion-into-northwest-nigeria/ . Alex Thurston, "Response to NYT Article on Boko Haram," Sahelblog, August 19, 2011; URL: https://sahelblog.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/response-to-nyt-article-on-boko-haram/ .
[135] Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "Boko Haram et la mise en récit du terrorisme au 'Sahelistan' Une perspective historique", Afrique contemporaine, vol. no 255, no. 3, 2015, pp. 21-39
[136] Jacob Zenn, "Northern Nigeria's Boko Haram: The Prize in al-Qaida's Africa Strategy," The Jamestown Foundation, December 6, 2012.
[137] Andrea Brigaglia, "The Volatility of Salafi Political Theology, the War on Terror and the Genesis of Boko Haram", Diritto e Questioni Pubbliche, pp. 174-201, 2015; URL: https://www.academia.edu/24045774/The_Volatility_of_Salafi_Political_Theology_the_War_on_Terror_and_the_Genesis_of_Boko_Haram .
[138] See 7:50 of "Understanding and Mitigating the Drivers of Islamist Extremism in N. Nigeria - Alex Thurston," Youtube, December 18, 2013; URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqGbz-OlPCY&t=992s .
[139] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida."
[140] Kyari Muhammed, "The Origins of Boko Haram." ed. by A. Carl LeVan and Patrick Ukata, in "The Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics," Oxford University Press, November 2018.
[141] Kyari Mohammed, "The message and methods of Boko Haram.".
[142] Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Buyer's Remorse," Foreign Policy, June 20, 2016; URL: http://foreignpolicy. com/2016/06/20/boko-harams-buyers-remorse/ .
[143] I should also note that ISWAP has performed better than I expected since writing that article for Foreign Policy in 2016, and ISWAP has thus far remained committed to Abubakr al-Baghdadi notwithstanding the Islamic State's territorial losses in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. I have reviewed primary source documents since writing the Foreign Policy article attesting to ISWAP's self-described 'hearts and minds' approach to the population in Nigeria, which is serving its cause well. The primary sources show that some of the Islamic State's theological and strategic guidance to ISWAP has in fact supported ISWAP's approach to the population. Abu Malik al-Tamimi (Anas al-Nashwan), "The Nigerian Questions," al-Turath Media Foundation, March 1, 2018; URL: https://jihadology.net/2018/03/01/new-release-from-shaykh-abu-malik-al-tamimi-anas-al-nashwan-the-nigerian-questions/ .
[144] I discuss the relevance of prospective, forward-looking analysis in the conclusion of my article for the Boko Haram report I edited for CTC in May 2018. In the final section before the conclusion I also provide an updated analysis on the potential for and consequences of AQIM sub-factions in Mali "reentering" Nigeria. see Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Fluctuating Affiliations: Future Prospects for Realignment with al-Qa'ida," ed. by Jacob Zenn, in "Boko Haram Beyond the Headlines: Analyses of Africa's Enduring Insurgency," West Point CTC, New York, May 2018; URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/app/uploads/2018/05/Boko-Haram-Beyond-the-Headlines.pdf .
[145] Alex Thurston, "A Kidnapping in Northern Nigeria [Updated]," Sahelblog, May 16, 2011; URL: https://sahelblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/a-kidnapping-in-northern-nigeria/ . Alex Thurston, "Response to NYT Article on Boko Haram," Sahelblog, August 19, 2011; URL: https://sahelblog.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/response-to-nyt-article-on-boko-haram/ .
[146] It is relevant to note their article in April 2018 was a 'special correspondence' for Perspectives on Terrorism and not subject to formal peer review. My article in Perspectives on Terrorism in December 2017 was, in contrast, subject to double peer review.
[147] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida."
[148] Irving Janis, "Groupthink."
[149] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida."
[150] Ibid.
[151] @Dr_DMilton, April 11, 2018.
[152] The five authors' loose use of terminology conflates being a "scholar" with being an "academic". They are plenty of academics who are non-scholarly and plenty of non-academics who are scholarly. Notable non-academics who have been scholars in their fields include Thomas Edison, Jane Goodall, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Darwin. Moreover, being an academic or a scholar is not the same as being an "analyst." As discussed in #6 in the Rebuttal section, Thurston's reliance on only "hard" evidence is atypical for an "analyst" who must assess evidence even when it is not "hard" evidence. For a brief discussion on what makes a "good analyst", see "Randolph H. Pherson - Máster en Analista de Inteligencia," March 20, 2014; URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3-Au2_-yM8 .
[153] Daniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern, "Groupthink in Academia: Majoritarian Departmental Politics and the Professional Pyramid," Maranto/Redding/Hess AEI book project, November 2007.
[154] Jacob Zenn, "A Biography of Boko Haram and the Bay'a to al-Baghdadi," CTC Sentinel, Volume 8, Issue 3, March 2015; URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/a-biography-of-boko-haram-and-the-baya-to-al-baghdadi/ . Jacob Zenn, "Wilayat West Africa Reboots for the Caliphate," CTC Sentinel, Volume 8, Issue 8, August 2015; URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/wilayat-west-africa-reboots-for-the-caliphate/ .
[155] Abdulbasit Kassim and Michael Nwankpa, "The Boko Haram Reader: From Nigerian Preachers to the Islamic State."
[156] It was mostly Abu Mus'ab al-Barnawi's loyalists talking to the Islamic State before March 2015. Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Conquest for the Caliphate: How Al Qaida Helped Islamic State Acquire Territory."
[157] I have arranged to share them publicly online in due time.
[158] Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram's Conquest for the Caliphate: How Al Qaida Helped Islamic State Acquire Territory."
[159] See approximately 40:00 of CDD event on Boko Haram, Abuja, Nigeria, October 14, 2015; URL: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1zlnL2ZgUfiR0N6b1U1NG1QOVU/edit . For a broader discussion of the exploitation of primary sources in contemporary conflicts, see "Acquisition and Unethical Use of Documents Removed from Iraq by New York Times Journalist Rukmini Callimachi," Middle East Studies Association of North America, May 2, 2018; URL: https://mesana.org/advocacy/committee-on-academic-freedom/2018/05/02/acquisition-and-unethical-use-of-documents-removed-from-iraq-by-rukmini-callimachi . Lara Takenaga, "We Collected and Published ISIS' Internal Documents. What Questions Do You Have?," New York Times, May 7, 2018; URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/07/reader-center/isis-files-documents-iraq.html . See also @ajaltamimi, May 5, 2018; URL: https://twitter.com/ajaltamimi/status/992704856489123840 . The documents discussed in this article were published voluntarily by violent non-state actors themselves or governments and not taken from battlefields.
[160] "Boko Haram's Conquest for the Caliphate: How Al Qaida Helped Islamic State Acquire Territory," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 35:5, published online 13 March 2018; URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2018.1442141.
[161] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings."
[162] @Pol_Sec_Analyst, May 1, 2018; URL: https://twitter.com/Pol_Sec_Analyst/status/991222829357129728 . See also Bart Schuurman (2018) Research on Terrorism, 2007–2016: A Review of Data, Methods, and Authorship, Terrorism and Political Violence. Schuurman included CTC Sentinel in his "assessment of the current state of affairs" of terrorism research, which he said "requires broadening the analytical scope to these seven newcomers" of which the Sentinel was one of them. Although Sentinel articles are not always formally subject to external peer review the articles are often subject to as much, if not more, editorial oversight and scrutiny in-house as other academic journals. Moreover, as this "The Glass House" section will show, even academic journals with double blind external peer review sometimes fail to correct basic facts.
[163] The list of my CTC Sentinel articles are available at: https://ctc.usma.edu/authors/jacob-zenn/?type=sentinel-articles .
[164] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida."
[165] Elizabeth Pearson and Jacob Zenn, "Women, Gender and the evolving tactics of Boko Haram," Contemporary Voices: St Andrews Journal of Terrorism Research . 5(1), 2014; URL: https://cvir.st-andrews.ac.uk/articles/10.15664/jtr.828/ .
[166] Zacharias Pieri and Jacob Zenn. 2017. "The Boko Haram Paradox: Ethnicity, Religion, and Historical Memory in Pursuit of a Caliphate", in Hentz, James and Hussein Solomon (eds.), Understanding Boko Haram: Terrorism and Insurgency in Africa. New York and London. Routledge.
[167] Zacharias Pieri and Jacob Zenn ( 2017), "The Boko Haram Paradox: Ethnicity, Religion, and Historical Memory in Pursuit of a Caliphate." Jacob Zenn, "The Terrorist Calculus in Kidnapping Girls in Nigeria: Cases from Chibok and Dapchi," CTC Sentinel, Volume 11, Issue 3, March 2018; URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/the-terrorist-calculus-in-kidnapping-girls-in-nigeria-cases-from-chibok-and-dapchi/ .
[168] Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "A Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria: The Case of Boko Haram."
[169] "Ibrahim Datti Ahmad: Shocking Revelation on Boko Haram, Riots in the North," Newsrescue, September 4, 2012; URL: http://newsrescue.com/ibrahim-datti-ahmad-shocking-revelation-boko-haram-riot s-north/#ixzz59avwUeEt . Hamisu Matazu, "Yobe scholar ready to work with UN on swap," Daily Trust, September 23, 2016; URL: https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/news/general/story/163555.html . Jacob Zenn, "The Terrorist Calculus in Kidnapping Girls in Nigeria: Cases from Chibok and Dapchi."
[170] Yakubu Musa, "Nigeria: Religious Upheaval Looms in Kano," This Day, September 3, 2002.
[171] "Head of Islamic Charity Denies Funding Islamist Rebellion," AFP, February 25, 2004.
[172] Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "A Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria: The Case of Boko Haram."
[173] "Boko Haram: How we caught Nigerian Al-Qaida leader – SSS," Vanguard, August 4, 2013; URL: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/04/boko-haram-how-we-caught-nigerian-al-Qaida-leader-sss/ .
[174] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings."
[175] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida."
[176] Abubakar Shekau, "Praise be to God the Lord of all worlds," Bin Laden's Bookshelf: Office of the Director of National Intelligence (released in August 2016 but dated to before Bin Laden's death in May 2011); URL: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ubl2016/ english/Praise%20be%20to%20God%20the%20Lord%20of%20all%20worlds.pdf .
[177] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida."
[178] Andrew Walker, "Is al-Qaida working in Nigeria?," BBC, August 4, 2009; URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8182289.stm .
[179] Jacob Zenn, "Demystifying al-Qaida in Nigeria: Cases from Boko Haram's Founding, Launch of Jihad and Suicide Bombings."
[180] Adam Higazi, "Mobilisation into and against Boko Haram in North-East Nigeria."
[181] Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram: Recruitment, Financing, and Arms Trafficking in the Lake Chad Region," CTC Sentinel, Volume 7, Issue 10, October 2014; URL: https://ctc.usma.edu/boko-haram-recruitment-financing-and-arms-trafficking-in-the-lake-chad-region/ .
[182] Adam Higazi, "Mobilisation into and against Boko Haram in North-East Nigeria."
[183] See comment by "Adam Higazi" in Elizabeth Pearson, "Do Nigeria's female suicide attackers point to desperation or high ambition for Boko Haram?" African Arguments, November 20, 2014; URL: http://africanarguments.org/2014/11/20/do-nigerias-female-suicide-attackers-point-to-desperation-or-high-ambition-for-boko-haram-by-elizabeth-pearson/ . For an example of how analysis of article comments can be useful for analysts, see Robert Feldman, "Open Source Analysis of Africa by the Masses: Professional Analysts Can Gain Insights by Reviewing Internet Article Comments," Foreign Military Studies Office, January 2, 2012; URL: https://community.apan.org/wg/tradoc-g2/fmso/m/fTimes New Roman",serif;Times New Roman";color:#222222">
[184] See, for example, Adam Higazi and Jimam Lar, "Articulations of Belonging: The Politics of Ethnic and Religious Pluralism in Bauchi and Gombe States, North-East Nigeria," Africa, 85 (1), 103–30, 2015.
[185] See comment by "Adam Higazi" in Elizabeth Pearson, "Do Nigeria's female suicide attackers point to desperation or high ambition for Boko Haram?"
[186] Adam Higazi, "Mobilisation into and against Boko Haram in North-East Nigeria."
[187] Jacob Zenn, "Cooperation or Competition: Boko Haram and Ansaru After the Mali Intervention." Jacob Zenn, "Leadership Analysis of Boko Haram and Ansaru in Nigeria," CTC Sentinel, 7:2 (February 2014); https://ctc.usma.edu/leadership-analysis-of-boko-haram-and-ansaru-in-nigeria/ .
[188] Adam Higazi, "Mobilisation into and against Boko Haram in North-East Nigeria."
[189] Irving Janis, "Groupthink."
[190] Ibid.
[191] Andrew Silke, "An Introduction to Terrorism Research", in Research on Terrorism: Trends, Achievements and Failures, ed. Andrew Silke (London / New York: Routledge, 2004). Andrew Silke, "The Devil You Know: Continuing Problems with Research on Terrorism," Terrorism and Political Violence 13, no. 4 (2001).
[192] Alexander Thurston, "Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement."
[193] Despite being written in 2015, Pérouse de Montclos also incorrectly claims in that article that Boko Haram "until the present concentrated its venom on Nigeria, and did not maintain diaspora links or coordinate with other jihadist groups in the Sahel." Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, "Boko Haram: les enjeux régionaux de l'insurrection," Fondation Jean-Jaurès, Note no. 246, February 10, 2015; URL: https://jean-jaures.org/nos-productions/boko-haram-les-enjeux-regionaux-de-l-insurrection .
[194] Adam Dolnik, "Conducting Field Research on Terrorism: A Brief Primer", Perspectives on Terrorism 5, no. 2 (2011), p. 5; Magnus Ranstorp, "Introduction: Mapping Terrorism Research - Challenges and Priorities", in Mapping Terrorism Research: State of the Art, Gaps and Future Direction, ed. Magnus Ranstorp (London / New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 6.
[195] Alex Thurston, "Campuses and Conflict in the Lake Chad Basin: Violent Extremism and the Politics of Religion in Higher Education," Resolve Network; URL: https://resolvenet.org/research/campuses-and-conflict-lake-chad-basin-violent-extremism-and-politics-religion-higher .
[196] Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, "North Nigeria Visit Report," November 30 – December 7, 2015; URL: https://www.hart-uk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/HART-North-Nigeria-Report-2015.pdf .
[197] Adam Higazi et al, "A Response to Jacob Zenn on Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida."
[198] Jacob Zenn, "Boko Haram: Recruitment, Financing, and Arms Trafficking in the Lake Chad Region."
[199] Adam Higazi, "Mobilisation into and against Boko Haram in North-East Nigeria."
[200] Marc-Antoine Perouse de Montclos, "A crisis of humanitarianism," Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, Vol. 16, Iss. 2, (Summer 2001): 95-100.