Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Objective • Relevant • Rigorous | March 2018 • Volume 11, Issue 3 FEATURE ARTICLE A VIEW FROM THE CT FOXHOLE Kidnappings in Nigeria LTC Kent Solheim The terrorist strategy behind the Chibok and Dapchi kidnappings Commander, 3rd Battalion, Jacob Zenn 3rd Special Forces Group FEATURE ARTICLE Editor in Chief 1 The Terrorist Calculus in Kidnapping Girls in Nigeria: Cases from Chibok and Dapchi Paul Cruickshank Jacob Zenn Managing Editor Kristina Hummel INTERVIEW 9 A View from the CT Foxhole:Lieutenant Colonel Kent Solheim, Commander, EDITORIAL BOARD 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group Colonel Suzanne Nielsen, Ph.D. Bryan Price Department Head Dept. of Social Sciences (West Point) ANALYSIS Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Price, Ph.D. 12 Black Banners in Somalia: The State of al-Shabaab's Territorial Insurgency and the Specter of the Islamic State Director, CTC Christopher Anzalone Brian Dodwell 21 Ansaroul Islam and the Growing Terrorist Insurgency in Burkina Faso Deputy Director, CTC Héni Nsaibia and Caleb Weiss 27 Islamic State Chemical Weapons: A Case Contained by its Context? CONTACT Markus K. Binder, Jillian M. Quigley, and Herbert F. Tinsley Combating Terrorism Center U.S. Military Academy This issue focuses on counterterrorism challenges in Africa. Next month 607 Cullum Road, Lincoln Hall marks the four-year anniversary of Boko Haram's kidnapping of as many West Point, NY 10996 as 276 schoolgirls in Chibok, Nigeria. The hostage attack created global Phone: (845) 938-8495 outrage and sparked the social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls. In our cover article, Jacob Zenn outlines the internal dynamics within Boko Haram that led the group to eventually enter into Email: [email protected] negotiations and release many of the girls. Zenn compares and contrasts the terrorist calculus in this Web: www.ctc.usma.edu/sentinel/ earlier hostage crisis with the kidnapping of 111 schoolgirls in Dapchi, Nigeria, last month, which also resulted in many of the girls being released. Our interview is with Lieutenant Colonel Kent Solheim, commander of 3rd Battalion, 3rd Spe- SUBSMISSIONS cial Forces Group, which is currently focused on security challenges in Africa. Christopher Anzalone The CTC Sentinel welcomes submissions. documents how al-Shabaab has continued to take advantage of turmoil in Somalia to sustain its op- Please contact us at [email protected]. erations and maintain itself as the dominant jihadi group in the country. In the wake of rising jihadi violence in Burkina Faso, including an attack on the French embassy and the Burkinabe army head- quarters earlier this month, Héni Nsaibia and Caleb Weiss pro le the recently established al-Qa`i- da- The views expressed in this report are aligned Burkinabe terrorist group Ansaroul Islam and the threat it poses to the country. those of the authors and not of the U.S. Markus Binder, Jillian Quigley, and Herbert Tinsley examine the Islamic State’s development and de- Military Academy, the Department of the ployment of chemical weapons. They note that while the group has used such weapons on the bat- tle eld in Army, or any other agency of the U.S. Syria and Iraq, it has featured little in its propaganda, calling into question how useful the group sees these weapons in advancing its strategic goals. While there has been much alarm about the threat of chemical Government. terror attacks in the West, the authors note the only evidence so far that the Is- lamic State has transferred its chemical warfare expertise from the battle eld to its foreign terrorism activities is the summer 2017 Cover: Released Nigerian school girls who Sydney hydrogen sul de plot. Paul Cruickshank, Editor in Chief were kidnapped from their school in Dapchi, in the northeastern state of Yobe, Nigeria, wait to meet the Nigerian president at the Presidential Villa in Abuja on March 23, 2018. (Philip Ojisua/AFP/Getty Images) MARCH 2018 CTC SENTINEL 1 Te Terrorist Calculus in Kidnapping Girls in Nigeria: Cases from Chibok and Dapchi By Jacob Zenn headlines after it was confirmed that 111 girls were kidnapped from Nearly four years since Boko Haram’s kidnapping of 276 a school there in February 2018.3 Four years since Boko Haram’s schoolgirls in Chibok, Nigeria, Nigerian jihadis again kidnapping of 276 girls in Chibok in April 2014, another hostage carried out a mass kidnapping—this time of more than crisis played out in Nigeria. 100 schoolgirls in Dapchi in February 2018. The behind- This article provides a chronology of the Chibok kidnapping the-scenes maneuvering of the Abubakr Shekau-led group from the day it occurred through the release of more than 100 girls in the aftermath of the Chibok kidnapping showed even in October 2016 and May 2017 and explains Boko Haram’s internal motivations for negotiating their release. It then makes a number the most hardline jihadis were prepared to negotiate. of observations about the more recent Dapchi case. The Dapchi The group behind the new kidnapping—reportedly the girls were reportedly held by the Islamic State’s Wilayat West Afri- Islamic State’s Wilayat West Africa led by Abu Musab al- cac—and not ‘Boko Haram’ fightersd under the leadership of Abu- Barnawi—took a diferent approach than the mercurial bakr Shekau, who held the Chibok girls—and this resulted in a very and publicity-hungry Shekau. Among other reasons, diferent approach than Boko Haram’s in the Chibok kidnapping. the Dapchi girls, unlike most of the Chibok girls, were Muslim who from the group’s point of view needed to Chronology of the Chibok Kidnapping be ‘rescued’ from and warned about their ‘Western’ This section provides a chronology of five phases of the Chibok kid- education. With Wilayat West Africa’s release of almost napping. all of the girls taken from Dapchi one month after the kidnapping, it has carried out one of the most efective— Phase 1: Kidnapping On April 14, 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from and most surprising—propaganda coups in the history their school dormitory in Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria. The jihadis of the jihadi insurgency in Nigeria while also solidifying presented themselves as Nigerian soldiers seeking to protect the its position as the preeminent jihadi force in Nigeria. girls from a Boko Haram attack in order to convince them to leave the school. In the ensuing hours, Boko Haram took the girls in a ore than 15 years ago, in 2002, Abubakr Shekau convoy toward the group’s base in Sambisa Forest, Borno State. was among the first members of Boko Harama Fifty-seven of them immediately escaped from the group’s convoy to retreat from urban society to the rural village when they suspected the “soldiers” were really Boko Haram, but the of Dapchi, Yobe State, Nigeria, after his co-reli- other 219 schoolgirls were taken to a Boko Haram camp in Sambisa gionists declared takfir (infidelity) on the entire Forest.4 MNigerian population.1 After clashing with villagers there over fish- ing rights, Shekau’s group retreated to another village called Kana- Phase 2: Publicity ma in Yobe State. In late 2003, however, Nigerian security forces in On May 5, 2014, while international media was focused on a miss- consultation with Nigerian salafis who originally supported Boko ing Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, Shekau Haram destroyed the group’s encampment in Kanama after they issued an hour-long video in which he said he would “sell” the girls realized the group was in contact with al-Qa`ida and the Algerian as “slaves in the market.”5 He also justified slavery in Islam and his GSPCb and was training for jihad in Nigeria.2 The village of Dapchi, which had faded into anonymity since 2002, made international c Islamic State’s Wilayat West Africa is also referred to as Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) or Wilayat Gharb Ifriqiya in Arabic. a The group was then commonly called the “Yobe Taliban.” d Shekau’s fighters operated under the name Jama`at Ahl al-Sunna li-Da`wa wa-l-Jihad from 2009 until Shekau’s pledge to the Islamic State in March b The GSPC is an acronym for Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, 2015 when Jama`at Ahl al-Sunna li-Da`wa wa-l-Jihad ceased to exist and which was the predecessor to al-Qa`ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and became Wilayat West Africa. After the Islamic State promoted Abu Musab was active from 1998 to 2007. al-Barnawi to be the new “governor” of Wilayat West Africa and Shekau was demoted in August 2016, Shekau revived Jama`at Ahl al-Sunna li-Da`wa wa-l-Jihad, which was not part of the Islamic State but has still expressed Jacob Zenn is an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown Uni- loyalty to the Islamic State. However, since 2009 Jama`at Ahl al-Sunna versity’s Security Studies Program and a fellow of African and li-Da`wa wa-l-Jihad has almost universally been known in the popular press and government circles as “Boko Haram” (which means “Western Eurasian Afairs at The Jamestown Foundation. He conducted an education is sinful” in the Hausa language). Prior to 2009, the group did not organizational mapping project on Boko Haram with the Embas- have a consistent name, but was often referred to as the “Yobe Taliban” or sy of Switzerland in Nigeria in 2015. Follow @Bokowatch “Nigerian Taliban.” 2 CTC SENTINEL MARCH 2018 ZENN A soldier from the 7th Division of the Nigerian Army stands amidst the ruin of the Government Girls Secondary School Chibok in Borno State in northeastern Nigeria on March 25, 2016.