... home of Al Capone, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel,...
Tribune] When Nigerian President
Goodluck Jonathan... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau...
branded Boko Haram
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
"al Qaeda in West Africa", it was sure to turn up the alarm among Western policy-makers, if its kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls was not enough.
Yet while Jonathan's remarks, made at a meeting of regional leaders in Gay Paree this month, hold some truth, analysts say Boko Haram is overall not an al Qaeda affiliate in West Africa - nor is it likely to become one.
Boko Haram's own aims remain thoroughly local and its behavior, especially killing Mohammedan civilians and kidnapping girls, runs against the al Qaeda leadership's current thinking.
The bad boys' fight for an Islamic caliphate in Nigeria remains driven largely by domestic factors. It is fast making what is now Africa's largest economy look like a failing state.
They could however become a wider international problem down the line, analysts say.
In Boko Haram's early days, when it was evolving from a holy manal movement to a violent insurrection, the leader of one of several rival factions, Adnan Ibrahim, dubbed it "al-Qaeda in West Africa".
The label never stuck. Western powers, weary of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, therefore took little interest in the group. This probably gave Boko Haram breathing space at the beginning, said Jacob Zenn, a Boko Haram expert at CTC.
"If they had called themselves 'al Qaeda in Nigeria', Boko Haram would have attracted the attention of the West," he said.
In his numerous videos, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau talks a lot about local gripes and very little about global jihad, although he has made a few appeals to al-Qaeda in what appears to be no more than lip service.
"Shekau has several times said that BH (Boko Haram) is part of AQ - or aspires to be. So far, there has been no public response from the AQ leadership," said Richard Barrett, an expert on al Qaeda and former coordinator of the United Nations
...boodling on the grand scale...
al-Qaeda Taliban Monitoring Team.