No major connection between Boko Haram, ISIS – Expert

Professor Graeme Wood is a contributing editor to The Atlantic, and a lecturer in Political Science at Yale University. He also lived and wrote in the Middle East from 2002 to 2006 and has studied and written extensively on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He visited Nigeria for an Interactive Session on […]

Professor Graeme Wood is a contributing editor to The Atlantic, and a lecturer in Political Science at Yale University. He also lived and wrote in the Middle East from 2002 to 2006 and has studied and written extensively on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He visited Nigeria for an Interactive Session on his research findings about the motivations of the ISIS/ISIL terrorist movements and their similarities and differences with Boko Haram. Daily Trust spoke to him, and herewith, are excerpts:

Daily Trust: Is there a proven link to ISIS and Nigeria’s Boko Haram terrorists?
Professor Graeme Wood: There is an ideological connection and there’s official allegiance displayed between the two organizations. But we haven’t actually seen any smoking gun connection, so to speak, in an operational sense, between the two groups.
DT: So declarations by Boko Haram that seem to point in that direction are probably grandstanding?
Wood: I don’t think they are grandstanding. I think they are actually very important. From the perspective of ISIS, getting allegiance or declarations of allegiance from Boko Haram is a demonstration to jihadist groups in other parts of the world that you can be accepted by ISIS, that ISIS has a global ambition, and that if they the smaller groups want to be propelled to the first rank of Jihadist organizations, they can quickly do that by giving allegiance to ISIS.
DT: So is ISIS’s financial network sophisticated enough to cater for groups with similar modus operandi in other countries or regions?
Wood: I think ISIS mostly expects the groups in other countries or regions to be autonomous as much a possible – to be self-financing, but to share a general ideological inclination toward a global caliphate that’s headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as long as they are willing to give allegiance in that sense. To enforce certain rules in their interpretation of Islamic law, then everything is up for grabs. They can take ISIS’ manpower, its money, or not, it doesn’t much matter.
DT: There’s buzz currently going on about how terror groups basically crowd-fund. What do you think about that?
Wood: From what we know about ISIS, it does crowd-fund in the sense that it collects its revenue locally. It’s not principally funded by donations from the outside, or support from states, or even from revenue from selling oil or antiquities to outsiders. ISIS gets its money from taxation, confiscation, theft, and I suppose they will like to call those ‘donations’
DT: ISIS has been evolving over the years. Just how potent or deadly will you say the group is right now?
Wood: ISIS is a serious threat to, principally, the Muslims in areas where it operates, and that means Libya, Syria, Iraq, more than anywhere else and I am leaving aside Boko Haram. ISIS has core territories in the ones I have just listed. I don’t think that it’s as dangerous as people sometimes think it is, to places like Europe, and the United States. They certainly will be thrilled to pull off a major attack in Europe and the US, but really, the focus of their energy is fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad, especially the government of Iraq and the Kurds, and also other Islamic organizations which haven’t pledged allegiance to it.
DT: Why do people go out of their way to join ISIS, what’s the appeal?
Wood: When they arrive there and you ask them why they are joining, then they will talk about religion, about the promise of the Caliphate, the prophesies of Mohammed, the End of Times and so on. And they will say ISIS is the fulfillment of their lives as Muslims. Sometimes if you look deeper into these people’s past, you will find that there are other factors that have led them to come to ISIS. It’s not necessarily poverty or even the lack of opportunity, but it’s a kind of deep emptiness in their souls where they want to have, fulfillment that they can’t get in their home countries.
In a place like Tunisia or in Egypt, exactly what are they looking forward to in their lives? Sometimes they will have jobs and they won’t feel like they are self-actuating, they won’t feel like they have control over their destinies, something greater in their lives to look forward to than perhaps a middle-class existence. The same thing on the streets of Birmingham or London, where a lot of people just decide, ‘okay, now I see my entire future ahead of me, if I’m lucky I will be working an office job, and I will go out for fried chicken on Friday nights. Is that really going to satisfy me in the end, is that what I want my life to be?’ Now, ISIS says ‘you can put that all aside, your life might be shorter, your comfort might be less, but you will be able to take part in this grand historical event that’s blessed by God himself’. That’s a very attractive thing if the other opportunities you see around you are boring or uninspiring.
DT: What does ISIS use to justify its approach in the name of Islam?   
Wood: ISIS has a very particular interpretation of Islam that includes a few concepts that are not at the forefront of most interpretations. They try to have loyalty only to other Muslims and to disavow relationships with non-Muslims. The other one is they believe that huge numbers of people that call themselves Muslims are not. And because they are apostates they must be killed. ISIS uses this chain of reasoning to declare war on huge numbers of people and justify the ambition of killing hundreds of millions.  
DT: As an expert on this, how do you feel ISIS can ultimately be defeated?
Wood: ISIS has to be seen in a context of bad governance, economic problems, and ideologies. I think it has to be defeated over the long term by investing all of these things, as well as to bring military action. I do not believe that simply fighting ISIS with US military, and marines is going to defeat the organization for good. You have to find a way for people to have some stake in the government that rules them. They have to be able to regard it as legitimate. That’s the underlying problem.
So, we need to make sure that they have an alternative, first of all. Secondly, the ideological aspects of ISIS have to be addressed. There’s a lot of effort already undertaken in the Muslim world to combat ISIS’s specific view of religion, and that needs to continue. But it has to be viewed as an intellectual battle, not just a matter of saying loud enough that ISIS is wrong. This is the kind of long-term war of ideas within Islam that I think is going to take decades to hash out.