Newest Islamic State Faction Claims Responsibility for Burkina Faso Kidnapping

Adnan Abu al-Walid al-Sahrawi, the leader of the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) has claimed responsibility for the April 4 kidnapping of a Romanian security worker in northern Burkina Faso on the Mali border.  Romanian authorities are still determining the authenticity of the tape, which accuses the Romanian government of being slow in negotiating for the worker’s release.

Al-Sahrawi is the former leader of the Mali-based Jihadist group Al Murabitoon group, which represented the merger of Sahrawi’s MUJAO with Mokart Belmokhtar‘s Signers in Blood/Masked Men Brigade organization. However, recently Adnan Abu al-Walid al-Sahrawi, at the time a leader of Al Murabitoon, reportedly declared allegiance with the Islamic State. Quickly, Al Murabitoon officials released statements explaining Sahrawi’s claims were on behalf of himself and MUJAO, not Al Murabitoon as a whole, or Belmokhtar. Belmokhtar is viewed as a strict Al Qaeda loyalist and has been since Al Murabitoon’s creation in the summer of 2013. When Al Murabitoon carried out an attack on a gas facility in Algeria in 2013 that killed dozens, the group claimed responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda.

The question now lies at how and why would MUJAO, also known as a part of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), shift its allegiance from al-Qaeda to the Islamic State? A similar situation was seen earlier this year when Boko Haram announced its loyalty to the Islamic State. The issue at hand is one of Shariah jurisprudence regarding the formation of a Caliphate and the obligatory nature of allegiance to the Caliph by groups which are convinced of Islamic State’s viability to fill this role. In their original Caliphate declaration Islamic State noted:

We clarify to the Muslims that with this declaration of khilāfah, it is incumbent upon all Muslims to pledge allegiance to the khalīfah Ibrāhīm and support him (may Allah preserve him). The legality of all emirates, groups, states, and organizations, becomes null by the expansion of the khilāfah’s authority and arrival of its troops to their areas. (emphasis added).

It seems possible that Sahrawi views recent Islamic State expansions into North Africa through Libya and Tunisia, and into West Africa through Boko Haram as sufficient to meet this requirement of “expansion,” while Belmokhtar, with his personal loyalty to Zawahiri does not. In a memo from Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) discovered in Mali, Belmokhtar is quoted as saying:

“We affirm that we have been, continue to be and will remain God willing faithful to our pledge to our leadership, represented by Sheikh Osama, God rest his soul, and his comrade, the patient and esteemed Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri. We believe they are the leadership of the Islamic Nation, not the leaders of an organization alone. We love them and we were convinced by their program and their experience even before we pledged our allegiance to them. So it’s even more now that we are swords in their hands.”

Despite not acquiring the loyalty of the full al Murabitoon organization and high profile leader Belmokhtar, the Islamic State is likely to be pleased with the MUJAO oath, whose operation in Mali can help to provide geographic links between Boko Haram in Nigeria and operations in Libya. It will remain to be seen what assets and capabilities MUJAO will take from its split with Belmokhtar, and whether the two will be able to continue to coordinate despite a disagreement over the the validity of Al Baghdadi’s supremacy as Caliph.