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| - Nigeria's Boko Haram -- which claimed Tuesday to have abducted hundreds of schoolchildren -- started out as an Islamic anti-corruption group. But its decade-long insurgency has since devastated the northeast of the country, with massacres and suicide bombings spilling over into neighbouring Chad, Niger and Cameroon. It has also spawned a splinter group affiliated with the Islamic State group. Boko Haram aims to create a hardline Islamic state in Nigeria. The group's name is Jama'tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad (JAS) but it is commonly called Boko Haram, which loosely translates from the Hausa language as "Western education is forbidden". Its founder and spiritual leader Muhammad Yusuf blamed Nigeria's ills on Western values left by former colonial master Britain. He also accused the country's secular leaders of corruption and neglecting Muslim regions. Yusuf built a following among disaffected youths. He was killed in police custody in July 2009 after an uprising in Maiduguri, Borno state, that prompted a fierce military assault. Some 800 people died in the action, and Boko Haram's mosque and headquarters were left in ruins. Many of its supporters fled the country. After Yusuf died, his successor, Abubakar Shekau, undertook a violent campaign of deadly attacks on schools, churches, mosques and state security forces. Some Boko Haram members are thought to have trained with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in northern Mali in 2012 and 2013. Among the group's most notorious acts was the April 2014 kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from the remote town of Chibok. The mass abduction brought worldwide notoriety and came as Boko Haram was turning large swathes of the northeast into a no-go area, with the violence spilling over into Cameroon, Chad and Niger. In August 2014 Shekau proclaimed a "caliphate" in the Borno town of Gwoza, and in March 2015 pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. The violence sparked a humanitarian crisis and acute food shortages in the mainly rural northeast. An offensive since 2015 by Nigerian troops backed by soldiers from Cameroon, Chad and Niger drove jihadists from most of the area. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari declared in December 2015 that Boko Haram was "technically" defeated. But the group and its dissident offshoot -- the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) -- still stage deadly attacks on both military targets and civilians. Some two million people are still displaced in the region. Mass trials of suspects started in October 2017 but most were released due to lack of evidence, with some 100 locked up. A faction led by the son of Muhammad Yusuf, Abu Mus'ab al-Barnawi, broke away in 2016, angered at Shekau's indiscriminate targeting of civilians. The ISWAP has the backing of the Islamic State group. It is particularly active on the Chad and Niger borders and has since July 2018 carried out numerous attacks on military bases. The group is also behind the recent abduction and killing of Christians and aid workers. Shekau's faction continues to stage suicide bombings targeting civilians, but has been under pressure from the military that has bombed its camps and hideouts. In 2019, a group of fighters known as "Bakura" operating in the Lake Chad area pledged allegiance to Shekau. Earlier this year, Boko Haram released videos featuring alleged members in northwest and northcentral Nigeria. On Friday, Boko Haram claimed to have abducted up to 333 young boys from a school in Kankara, in the northwest, far from its Sambisa forest base. burs-jmy-fg/lhd/erc
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