Ansaru : Nigeria’s New Face Of Terror

Ansaru, Nigeria’s new terrorist group in Nigeria specialises in hostage taking 

With its hands full and security resources overstretched battling Islamic militant group, Boko Haram which activities have resulted in over a thousand deaths in the past two years alone, Nigeria is now being confronted with a new form of insurgency from a new terrorism group, Ansaru.
The full name of the group- Jama’atu Ansarul Musilimina Fi Biladis Sudan, which means “Vanguards for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa,” indicated the ambition of the group as an exporter of terrorism from Nigeria to other parts of Africa. The group claimed responsibility for the 16 February kidnapping of seven foreigners from a Setraco Construction Company site in Bauchi state, one of the worst incidents targeting foreigners in northern Nigeria.
The attack took place in Jama’are, about 200 kilometres from the state capital and forced Setraco to immediately evacuate all of its staff from the compound where the hostages were seized and eventually to Abuja. “There was an attack on the Setraco construction company site in Jama’are town by unknown gunmen”, Mohammed Ladan,  Bauchi State Police Commissioner said.

According to reports, well armed operatives of the terrorist group had first launched attacks on a police station and a prison in Jama’are before the abductions, but no causality was recorded. They then killed the guard protecting the house where the foreigners were kept before proceeding to take them hostage. The hostages reportedly include two Lebanese, two Syrians, one Briton, a Greek citizen and an Italian whose whereabouts remained unknown as at the time of writing this story last week.
In an email statement sent to journalists, Ansaru said it has “the custody of seven persons, which include Lebanese and their European counterparts working with Setraco,”. The group gave as reasons for its action “the transgressions and atrocities done to the religion of Allah… by the European countries in many places such as Afghanistan and Mali.”
With its rising profile after it claimed the abduction of a French national in December, last Tuesday, the group indicated that unlike Boko Haram, its activities will not be restricted to Nigeria as it crossed the borders to Cameroon where it successfully kidnapped a French family of seven made up of three adults and four children, who were vacationing in Cameroon. Eyewitnesses said the family who were tourists were picked up when their vehicle got stuck in the sand, near the town of Dabanga, six kilometres from the Nigerian border by some armed men on motorbikes.
The men were forced to leave their car at gunpoint. “The three adult tourists and four children were picked up early today (Tuesday) by men riding on motorbikes who rode off toward the border into Nigeria,” a Cameroonian official identified as Jean-David Ndjigba was quoted as saying. GDF Suez, a company involved in gas exploration confirmed that the captive is its employee working in the Cameroon capital of Yaounde and his family on vacation in the Northern part of the country. “We believe it’s the Boko Haram group that carried out the kidnapping, but we don’t know for sure. Unfortunately, terror breeds terror,” Jean-Yves Le Drian French Defence Minister said.
Later on Tuesday, Cameroon Foreign Ministry confirmed that the hostages have been taken into the Nigerian territory. Also, indication last week was that the French Special Forces have arrived in northern Cameroon to help locate the kidnapped family.
Ansaru which is believed to be a faction of Boko Haram first introduced itself to Nigerians in January 2012 in a statement circulated in Kano. This was after multiple attacks launched by Boko Haram in the same month resulted in the death of close to 300 people in the commercial city. Kano State government said most of those killed in the broad daylight were Muslims. But in the statement signed by one Abu Usamata Al’Ansari, who claimed to be the leader of Ansaru, the group expressed displeasure with Boko Haram’s style of operations, describing it as inhuman to the Muslim Ummah. It also stated that its aim is to restore dignity and sanity to “the lost dignity of Muslims in black Africa” and to bring back the dignity of Islam in Nigeria and the Sokoto Caliphate, founded by Othman Dan Fodio in 1804, which spread across Niger Republic, Cameroon and some other West African countries.
Abu Usmatul al-Ansari usually appears with a veil covering his face in videos posted by the group. The group logo is made up of the Qur’an, with a gun on both sides. Black flags with the inscription, “There is no deity but Allah and Muhammad is His Messenger”, are attached to the flags. “For the first time, we are glad to announce to the public the formation of this group that has genuine basis. We will have dispassionate look into everything, to encourage what is good and see to its spread and to discourage evil and try to eliminate it,” the insurgency group which motto is “Jihad Fi Sabilillah,” meaning it is fighting and sacrificing for Allah’s cause said. The group had also in a video released in June 2012 condemned the killing of Muslims by a fellow Muslim, equating it with accepting laws other than the Shari’a in obvious reference to the activities of Boko Haram. Some analysts believe the leader of the group may be Khalid al-Barnawi, one of three Nigerian extremists described as “global terrorists” by the United States in 2011.
Barnawi, a native of Borno State is alleged to have trained with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Algeria some years ago after which he began to carry out the kidnap of foreigners in Niger and Nigeria. The State Security Service had also declared Barnawi “Most Wanted” in November 2012 for being on Boko Haram’s Shura Council. It believed that Ansaru has links with terrorist organisations like Northern Mali-based Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Al-Qaeda’s North African wing and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, MUJWA. This, it was gathered is why the group is mimicking the hostage taking style of its more terrorism notorious allies.
The group claimed responsibility for the 25, November, 2012 attack on Special Anti-Robbery Squad,SARS headquarters in Abuja. Though the Police claimed that only five accused persons in their cells escaped during the attack, Ansaru however said it was able to set 37 members and 286 other prisoners free during the attack. It was believed that prominent among those freed during the attack on the SARS facility was the wife of Kabiru Sokoto, the mastermind of the 2011 Christmas Day bombings of a Catholic Church in Suleja. Even before it came to limelight in January 2012, the group has been linked with different terrorist activities. For example, Ansaru claimed responsibility for the kidnap in May 2011 of Chris McManus and Franco Lamolinara, a British and an Italian engineer respectively who were killed by their captors during a failed rescue attempt by United Kingdom’s Special Boat Squadron in March 2012.
Following the killings, Britain announced a ban on Ansaru, which it said is aligned with al-Qaeda. Indeed, Britain’s Interior Ministry described Ansaru as “a Nigeria-based terrorist organisation motivated by an anti-Nigerian government and anti-Western agenda.” “An order has been approved today by parliament which will proscribe Ansaru from midnight on Thursday evening, making membership of, and support for, the organisation a criminal offence,” Mark Harper, a Minister of State for Immigration, told the parliament. “It is believed to be responsible for the murders of British national, Christopher McManus, and his Italian co-worker Franco Lamolinara, in March 2012,” he added. On 23 December, 2012, the group also announced its kidnapping of a French engineer, Francis Colump, 63, an engineer working for the French company Vergnet. It was gathered that about 30 gunmen stormed Vergnet’s residence in Katsina state, and launched attacks on his well-guarded compound before abducting the Engineer who was working on wind power project in the State. Ansaru is still holding the Frenchman and has not talked or demand for any ransom payment.
Last January, Ansaru also claimed responsibility for the attack on a convoy of soldiers transiting from the Southern to the Northern part of the country on their way to Mali. Two were killed in that bomb and gun attack. Ansaru had claimed that it launched the attacks because Nigerian soldiers were joining the French-led military campaign to “demolish the Islamic empire of Mali”. French companies operating in Abuja and other parts of Northern Nigeria have already withdrawn most of their staff from the region as a result of the threat from the terrorist organisation.
Analysts said the insurgent group is also not in the habit of demanding for ransom or negotiating for the release of hostages. This means that the hostages, just like others before them may remain with their abductors for a long time, except the security forces are able to unravel the base of the group. Even then, previous failed rescue bids mean all the countries whose citizens are being held hostage have to be carried along in any attempt to use force against the insurgent group. “What is likely to happen is some kind of drawn-out period — weeks or months — on how to manoeuvre to safeguard the lives of these hostages while not giving in to ransom demands,” Reuters quote Mark Schroeder, vice president of Africa analysis at Stratfor, a U.S.-based private global intelligence firm as saying last week. “It’s difficult to know what they would be willing to accept in exchange. If their conditions are ‘get the hell out of Mali, that’s a very difficult proposition for Western governments to deal with,” said Raffaello Pantucci, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. Francois Hollande, the President of France last week indicated that the kidnappings would not stop France from pursuing its operation in Mali. Last week, Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF the pan Northern political organisation warned that unless urgent steps are taken to stem the tide of violent killings and kidnapping of foreigners in the north, the rest of the world may decide against doing business with Nigeria