Impact on Boko Haram unclear after splinter group leader held

Khalid Al Barnawi – designated a global terrorist by the United States since 2012 – was detained on April 1 with three others and authorities are hopeful that his arrest will lead to them to other senior commanders of extremist groups.

Kano // Nigeria’s security services have hailed the arrest of the leader of the Boko Haram splinter group Ansaru, Khalid Al Barnawi, saying it will lead to them to other senior commanders of extremist groups.

“The arrest of Barnawi is a huge success and will have a profound effect on counter-terrorism operations in Nigeria and beyond,” one security source said.

“He is a known transnational terrorist and the backbone of all Al Qaeda affiliate groups in West Africa.”

Barnawi, designated a global terrorist by the United States since 2012, was detained on April 1 with three others in the Kogi state capital, Lokoja, and found with four Thuraya satellite phones.

The phones provided several leads to “high-profile Boko Haram and Ansaru elements” in the capital, Abuja, Lokoja and the central city of Jos, said another source.

“This has been our biggest breakthrough against terrorism in Nigeria ever,” said a third.

“We still have other high-ranking terrorists on our radar based on the information gathered from the phones of Barnawi and his three comrades,” he added.

Barnawi is certainly a major prize for Nigerian intelligence, the Department of State Services (DSS), which called him “a trained terrorist commander” who also recruited for Al Qaeda affiliates.

He is accused of masterminding a string of kidnappings of westerners between 2011 and 2013.

“This arrest is a major milestone in the counter-terrorism fight,” the DSS said on April 9.

But while security analysts agree he is the most high-profile capture since the start of the insurgency in 2009, it remains unclear what effect it will have on operations on the ground.

Boko Haram has been pegged back by an aggressive fightback from the Nigerian military since January last year, losing territory and its capacity to mount conventional attacks.

President Muhammadu Buhari has gone so far as to say the militants were “technically” defeated, even if suicide and bomb attacks have continued in northeast Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger.

Yan St-Pierre, from the Modern Security Consulting group, however, said Barnawi, who trained in Sudan, Afghanistan and with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Algeria, was “influential”.

But he was only one part of a disparate organisation.

His arrest “should not change much in terms of Ansaru’s terrorist activities”, Mr St-Pierre said, as the group has not carried out many operations since 2013.

“Where things could change however is in the recent openings some Boko Haram-affiliated groups have made to AQIM in the last few months, and Khalid al-Barnawi was a huge part of that,” he said.

“His arrest will affect the dynamic of the discussions between AQIM and those he represented” at a time when the Nigerian militants were reaching out to extremists further afield.

Ansaru, which is more ideologically aligned to Al Qaeda, is believed to have been formed as a result of disapproval at Boko Haram’s indiscriminate targeting of civilians.

Andrew Walker, author of 'Eat the Heart of the Infidel': The Harrowing of Nigeria and the Rise of Boko Haram, said shifting dynamics between the groups made the arrest's impact uncertain.

“However, I think that any removal of key powerful charismatic figures from this situation will have the potential to scatter the remaining fighters and supporters,” he said.

* Agence France-Presse