New Terrorist Group
According to an AFP report today, 22 Dec 2011, a terrorist calling themselves the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, or MOJWA, claimed responsibility for the abduction of three European, two of them women, from Tindouf refuge camp in Algeria on October, 23rd. Until this unknown terrorist group surfaced yesterday, most analysts assumed that AQIM (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magharib) had taken the aid workers. In their statement MOJWA vowed they would fight “to the last man… against the infidels.”
After reviewing MOJWA’s statement and the manner in which was presented, analysts now believe this to be a new, group is new, black African-led splinter group of AQIM that has troubled North Africa. They also think MOJWA will move the majority of its activities southward into West Africa.
The message was delivered in English and Hausa which is the mother tongue of people living primarily in Niger, Nigeria and Burkina Faso. It is also a trade language used throughout West Africa. MOJWA stated, “Today, we are inaugurating jihad in West Africa.”
Large quantities of weapons that were formerly in the hands of Muammar Gaddafi’s soldiers have been found in the Sahel and West Africa. This could well be the source of MOJWA’s cache due to the fact that hundreds of West Africans were mercenaries of Gaddafi this year.
In the statement MOJWA said that they are “the ideological descendants of Ousman Dan Fodio, El Hadj Omar Tall and Amadou Cheikhou, who all fought colonial invaders.” Fodio is the idol and inspiration for Nigeria’s terrorist group, Boko Haram. He founded the Sokoto Caliphate in 1809 in northern NIgeria. Omar Tall was a leading Senegalese academic and a military officer who founded an empire across Guinea, Senegal and Mali in the mid-19th century. Cheikhou was the founder and ruler of the Fula empire in the Mopti region of Mali in the first half of the 19th century.
It seems there is a new terrorist player in Africa. Judging from what they have done already and the roots from which they come, West African countries security forces will be finding out all they can about MOWJA.
Posted: at 26-12-2011 03:58 PM (12 years ago) | Newbie |
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